Microsoft Dynamics GP, NAV add new subscription licensing option beyond SPLA

SPLA licensing for Microsoft Dynamics GP and NAV is not dead, as has been suggested, but it has been augmented with a new subscription license that will give VARs and hosting partners better flexibility to tailor solution options and compete in the SMB ERP space.

Subscription Licensing (as we'll call it here, as opposed to SPLA) isn't actually all that new. It only became broadly available for Dynamics GP 2013 and NAV 2013 R2 in early 2014 but it was in beta for about a year and a half, says Carl Radecke, who leads pricing and  licensing for Microsoft's SMB ERP products.

Why the new option? While SPLA has worked for GP and NAV partners in many situations, it also has some inherent limitations for things like licensing and invoicing of individual customers, managing the use of ISV solutions, and enabling access to timely and accurate data on customer adds and other metrics that are important to partners' businesses.

For customers, the differences between SPLA and subscription are going to be small to negligible, though it may help by giving them more hosting options than previously, especially if they need to purchase ISV add-on solutions. 

Customized and integrated vertical solutions built on Dynamics GP and NAV should benefit from Subscription Licensing by broadening deployment options. The generalized nature of SPLA licensing has made some ISVs stay away from solutions deployed by hosting partners, and for good reason. If an ISV offers a license to utilize add-on functionality within a Dynamics NAV system, for example, and that license is applied to a hosting partner's SPLA license, it will essentially open up that extra IP to all Dynamics NAV ...