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 This announcement was originally made at Inspire this year, but has undergone a number of significant changes.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/

[MikkoKos]

I feel you here.

I have more than 10 years of experience in custom developing on SharePoint and Office 365. I know how to do apps with back-end or front-end technologies. After so many years, I finally got excited about something totally new, and I mean PowerApps and Flow with this. I mean, I'm far beyond citizen developer scope, but I do see the value.

With PowerApps, I'm able to discuss with that type of people, teams, and practices in different organizations that I haven't been able to reach before. They have seen the possibilities of small or medium size apps and service that would digitize their business done with PowerApps or Flow.

Unfortunately, these license changes are now pushing my clients to another direction. I'm also doubting that is it worth of the effort, money, and time to invest my own doing to this platform anymore?

[Anonymous]

That's exactly it, we have a supplier with a heavily customised SP type portal, and I can imagine it wouldn't be too difficult for them to extend their platform, develop something on par (ish), double or even triple their licence fee and still be 150 - 200K a year cheaper than this scheme. I mean, for real? Also I understand that for dynamics users this is not a big deal cost wise, and fair enough but you could have gone in way cheaper and still would have cleaned up no problems. I am very interested to see where this goes.

[tarinalees]

@Anonymous My hopeful heart is that this will get rectified (more reasonable cost is all I am asking, I'm not even asking for free) and I can keep on with the plan I made and built our whole business model around. However, my cynical, betrayed, heart is not so sure. We are shopping other options very aggressively. 

[lknudson1]

Regarding Blog:   "New licensing "options" for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow standalone paid plans
...we’re also listening to input about how to license and implement platform capabilities in standalone plans."

Not an option and not listening.

I could kudo probably 99% of the negative posts to Microsoft's new licensing plan.  Does Microsoft even have a metric on what they will lose and hope to gain on this move?

I have (like many others) invested the last two years building a consulting business model centered around PowerApps for clients and I believe it will all be lost once I "have the talk" with my customers.  

PowerApps had (and I mean had!) huge potential for capturing the cloud market on low code platform apps.  It looked to me like Microsoft was investing a lot of time and money into developing and consolidating the Power Platform with Azure,  and the Office 365 and Dynamics markets.  Would I be wrong to say that PowerApps is still not mature enough to warrant any cost to use it instead of other options?  I thought it was going in the right direction and despite some big gaps (printing, document handling, performance, and delegation limitations being a few) I think a lot of people were planning to hang in there hoping for some of those gaps to get filled. 

Existing cost models were fairly "reasonable" as they stood.  For my larger and mid-sized clients (and even smaller ones) I could make an argument that cost to value was acceptable.  Now, the only companies I can imagine going with PowerPlatform are those huge companies that don't even look at their IT budgets.

Citizen Developer looking for other options.

[DirectorMumbles]

This makes the platform extremely limiting which seems like a terrible business case for MS

[Andy77-2]

Nice work Microsoft, you have truly shot yourself in the foot with this decision. Who do you think are making/using your apps? People with no/small budgets thats who.

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[BrianHFASPS]

Is there written posted verification of SQL grandfathering / grace of sometime. Support is denying that exists to me.

[Pstork1]

For people looking for official notification of the 5 year grandfathering.  Its in the Official Licensing FAQ which you can find here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/powerapps-flow-licensing-faq

Here's an excerpt

How does the change to PowerApps and Microsoft Flow use rights for Office 365 applications affect me? Will my existing PowerApps applications and Microsoft Flow workflows continue to work?

Yes, existing apps and flows will continue to work. Customers who have been using PowerApps or Microsoft Flow with Office 365 using one or more of the connectors listed above will receive a transition period before the connector reclassification goes into effect. This transition period would be until October 1, 2020 or the expiration of their current Office 365 subscription term, whichever is longer. During the transition period customers can continue to create additional apps and flows using these connectors.

In addition, apps and flows created prior to October 1, 2019 which are using these connectors will receive an extended transition period until October 1, 2024. During this time, these qualifying apps and flows will be exempt from the Premium connector licensing requirements for the reclassified connectors.

[MagnusGöransson]

Great!

However, there are still questions out there. For example, what happens if my app need another connection to the same Azure SQL database, but to another table? That is in some ways a new connector. At least it is listed as a connector in the app.

Of if i need to connect the app to another Azure SQL database inside the same app that is already connected to a Azure SQL database?

Do we have any information on how the "per app/per user/per month/per etc"-licenses are bound to a specific app? Is that handled by the app maker or by the GA?

I understand that you dont have all the answers, but have you seen/heard anything regarding the above, Paul?

/Magnus

[dileeps]

It is based on connection type not on the connector itself. So if your app needs another connection to a different table, it is fine. Same with another SQL database itself.  As long as your App Id doesn't change, you can use it. 

As for licenses,

a) per user licenses are bound to a user like how all normal licenses work. They are not bound to any app.

b) Per app licenses are not bound to any user or app, they are bound to the environment where your app is present. They are like passes and get automatically consumed when a user who doesn't have any user license, uses an app enabled for per app passes.