New PowerApps and Flow Licensing coming October 1, 2019

[Pstork1]

If you haven't seen the announcement yet about the Licensing changes that are coming to PowerApps and Flow starting on October 1, 2019 you really need to read the following Blog. This announcement was originally made at Inspire this year, but has undergone a number of significant changes.  Make sure you read this and understand what it means to you and your organization.

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-licensing-options-for-powerapps-and-flow/

[gangurulz]

Each license is an annual commitment. However, you might be able to reassign licenses to other users per standard agreement terms

[Rick72]

While investigation the impact of the license model changes on existing PowerApps apps, does anyone know if the request limits are grandfathered too on Azure SQL Databases for 5 years, or are they enforced from october 1, 2019? Does anyone know this? I have not found any info on this.

[Rick72]

I wonder if the "full capabilities of PowerApps" includes the AI Builder.

[Pstork1]

The API limits didn't apply previously.  They are different than the Flow request limits.  Flow request limits are per flow in a month.  Api limits are per API call daily.  So they will not be grandfathered in.  But 95% of users never approach those limits based on MS telemetry.  So I wouldn't worry about it.

[Pstork1]

AI Builder has a different consumption based pricing model. Its part of the standard model, but there are additional costs involved in using it that are based on actual consumption.

[Rick72]

Hi @Pstork1  We have one (!) PowerApps app here that results in 1400 (on average) SQL requests per questionnaire. That is very close to 2000 (because of Office license with Azure SQL Database), meaning someone can only add one questionnaire per day and there is not a lot of room for other apps. So I do worry 

It is this number of requests (if you are wondering) because we decided not to make one table with many columns (because there are almost 1000 questions divided over 59 scenarios) but to have two tables where one table is the master table (one row per questionnaire) and the other table contains one row per question per questionnaire.

[AngryBatVoice]

Since my somewhat detailed post, which was an on-topic reaction to this announcement that contained no profanity or other community-guidelines violations that I could tell, appears to have been deleted without any explanation.  Could someone from Microsoft or a moderator of this community please explain to me the opinion of these changes I'm allowed to have?

EDIT (Original Post, however I did remove the part where I called the move a bait-and-switch, stated that Microsoft should be ashamed, and compared their 5-year grace period to adding sugar to poison, just in case those statements crossed a line):  

<vent>

Microsoft should recognize the damage this move has done to their brand. They have been selling us on this idea of "low-code-no-code" and then pulled the carpet out from under their customers by jacking up the price to an unreasonable degree. They have taken what was a platform full of promise and potential and turned it into a cash grab. It doesn't matter which team this decision comes from, at the end of the day, it is coming from Microsoft. If they don't have the ability to oversee and to make sure their teams are working together and not hurting each other's customers, then they have bigger problems than PowerApps users having access to AzureSQL. The Powerapps-AzureSQL scenario being "too good to be true" and in need of adjustment is just giving them too much benefit of the doubt.  I'm paying for PowerApps, I'm paying for AzureSQL, both products are within the Microsoft ecosystem, why in the world do I then need to pay a third time to connect them? And why does connecting the products cost 3x as much as the individual products themselves?

But this decision doesn't just damage Microsoft's brand and the trust they'd built with us.  With this decision, Microsoft has injured my own brand and credibility with my company.  I've spent the past year learning, developing, and selling my company on the idea of the Power Platform and to embrace the tools that we are paying for with our Office 365 and Azure licenses. My company has invested in my time and paid for training on the Power Platform, gaining me skills that I now won't be able to utilize. I have to go back to them and explain that our new processes involving the Power Platform are only a stopgap, because in 5 years the cost of continuing to use them will explode exponentially. 

We can't just go back to using Sharepoint as our data source, it is too insecure.  And the cost of the new licensing model is quite frankly out of our reach.  We aren't a large company.  The potential savings from continuing to use the Power Platform to streamline our processes doesn't come close to covering this new cost of the product.  There is no scenario where we can afford this.

</vent>

What could they have done instead?

1. Implement the new plans, but leave the AzureSQL and AzureBlobStorage connectors as Standard instead of Premium.  We're already paying for those products, the ability to use PowerApps to connect to them shouldn't need covered by a third fee.
2. Make Premium connectors ala carte/Pay as you go. Let me pay a reasonable fee to add a premium connector to my tenant.  I don't need ALL the premium connectors.  I don't need MOST of the premium connectors.  I really only need one or two. In our current setup, there are apps that we could benefit from, but I haven't built because the connector needed for it is premium, and the cost to get access to that single connector is too high, because I have to buy access to ALL the connectors to get it.
3. Have a much cheaper license for App/Flow USERs, similar to the cheaper F1 license for O365. I don't need everyone in my tenant to have the ability to make apps. I could see paying a higher fee for Maker/Admin licenses and having a minimal, F1-style fee for User licenses.
4. Make the Per-App license just that, a license Per-App, not Per-App-Per-User.  

I am pressing on with my PowerApps development for the time being, with the hopes that Microsoft course-corrects on this.  I know there is more to the new licenses than just the AzureSQL and Blob Storage connectors, but from my perspective, making those connectors Premium is what places the new licenses out of my reach.

I've contemplated just building a bunch of blank template PowerApps/Flows and adding these connectors to them, for future development after the Oct 1 mark, but I feel like this would be cheating the system, and I'd rather not treat Microsoft the way they are treating us. 

[FredericForest]

hey @AngryBatVoice ,

I get your point (I'm more or less in the same situation, with similar consequences), but I really do think that, despite all, it IS really a matter of perspective and markets. The dynamics team that 40$/month is quite cheap compare to where they are coming from. We, from the Azure or Office world feel... differently! ^^

Personally, I couldn't really care less about CDS (no offense) and that really shows the divide between the two realities. If, through licensing, the Power Plateform team is not willing to accomotade the SQL-based reality (which to me adresses a whole different, non-canibalizing market), then its a real shame... but we'll have to accept it (aka : leave, for most of us).

On another note, I thought you made some interesting comments on your ideas of what could be done.

• Solution 1 : to me this is cool, but somewhat useless if it doesn't come with either the HTTP response or a way to get data from PROCs with the regular SQL connector. I just need procs for any serious SQL work...
• Solution 2 : interesting... if compatible with the seeded (O365) PowerApp licences. Most of my apps would buy SQL, HTTP and Az Blob.
• Solution 3 : would love that, but I doubt it'll go in this direction considering how Power BI handles things. And the Power BI Premium-like option with its 4K$/month entry point would just not solving the problem.
• Solution 4 : also interesting !

And my personal fav : a price per daily login (ideally around 1$), more akin to the pay-as-you-go on Azure.

The beauty with these is that the could work WITH the existing new plans (not against them). Much easier to communicate.

For the guys that were around back then, Power BI also had a bit of an identity crisis with its licensing scheme during its initial release. First part of Excel, when the service (v1) was initially launched, it had a efty 40$/month price points for the full platform access. The results were disapointing to say the least. When v2 was relauched later, the new price point of 10$/month allowed the product to completly explode and become the success it is today, generating much more total revenu than v1 (yay for pricing elasticity). Hopefully, this lesson is being discussed internally as well... 

[Pstork1]

For the record...

• I'm don't work for Microsoft
• I'm not a Moderator on the forum
• I didn't report the original post or delete it

Not sure what happened to the original post. I never saw it so I don't know why it was deleted.

I don't disagree with some of your points and I've registered my concern that this is a very bad PR move with Microsoft directly.

[wjhepworth]

As a 20+ year champion of most Microsoft causes I can clearly state that this is the type of maneuver that winds up looking like Windows Phone.  While the Power Platform has a ton of promise it is still not fully mature and asking this much for a service that is still growing is truly unfortunate.  The value of having a relatively low cost platform that promotes sales of other profit centers such as O365, SharePoint, Dynamics and Azure services was brilliant.  This new concept that the Power platform IS the profit center rather than increasing sales in the other profit centers is a bad miscalculation and if it sticks will absolutely kill this platform.

My company has already spoken on the matter and will likely have to divest ourselves of the platform which we were in the process of ramping up on.  This decisions single handidly eliminated the growth of the platform which will kill off our Azure and O365 usage as well.  The words from our leadership's mouth is what you will hear across the world "Not gonna happen".

I am not against Microsoft trying to make money on the Power platform and hope they do.  However, going from O365 licenses covering end-user usage of the system to everybody pays $40/app/user/month is ridiculous.  Microsoft really needs to reconsider this.  In the meantime, development in the platform will cease in a few weeks while we search for alternatives.

Disappointing.