We have been fielding a ton of questions in regards to the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Licensing Model. I thought it would be helpful to share some licensing details:

So we have three new license types along with new costs.  Specially around costs, lets talk about two great new options INCLUDED with the new cost:

1. Mobility – Microsoft is going to give you mobility licenses for your Windows 8 and IPAD tablets out of the box. Q2 2014 Roadmap shows additional devices for Windows Phone, IPhone and Android devices.
** Note: Android devices might work out of the box, but will not be supported in the first release.

2. Free Instance – Microsoft is providing another free instance for development and test, which will be accessible by all your production user licenses. This is also following best practice to have an environment to develop, test and train in.

Another feature of the new license structure is to give the flexibility for different types of users. This allows the organization the flexibility to pick and choose licensing by user. This also introduces the most amount of questions! 🙂

Here’s the key – If the user is creating Sales Entities (Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities etc.) then they need the Professional License. If the user is a backoffice user only updating (Not creating these records), then they could use the basic license. (UPDATE: it appears creating account and contact records can be handled using the Basic License – Thanks Adam Vero for bring this to my attention). For XRM applications not making use of the main these records types can really benefit from the Essential license to access Customized Entities.

Here’s a great visual chart to determine what each of the licenses provide to help you choose which one. Once upgrade, the customer will be responsible to change the license types in the O365 portal after the upgrade.