Microsoft has announced a new payment option for its Power Apps and related Power Platform services such as PowerToys.
The move means that along with its current user-based model, in which businesses rent out the services for each individual user, Microsoft is offering a pay-as-you-go plan, in which customers only pay for the time the app is actually running.
As Power Apps are heavily linked to the Azure cloud services, the company is saying customers can use their Azure subscription to cover their Power Apps usage and Dataverse capacity.
“Historically, low-code platforms have required customers to figure out their licensing needs in advance – often involving time-consuming procurement processes negotiated between developers, makers and IT professionals,” the company said in an announcement. “While there are many benefits to the scale and predictability of user-based licensing, several scenarios today require the agility of a usage-based model.”
Great for newly built apps
Microsoft believes the pay-as-you-go option will be a great solution for businesses unsure how many people will end up using a newly built app.
“When building a new app it is often tough to predict how many users will want to use it, making it hard to forecast your licensing needs in advance. Now you can start with the pay-as-you-go option to gauge usage patterns then determine whether purchasing a pre-paid Power Apps subscription plan makes sense.”
By letting teams pay for Power Apps through Azure subscriptions, and visualize and divide up costs through Azure Cost Management and Azure tags, businesses will be able to allocate software license costs to the departments and teams using the licenses.
Businesses interested in using the new services just need to link the environment containing their apps, to an Azure subscription. After that, whatever usage of Power Apps and Dataverse in that environment occurs, will be billed to the subscription.
Microsoft has also introduced three new sets of Azure meters, to better track the usage and the costs: Power Apps per app pay-as-you-go meter, Dataverse pay-as-you-go meters; and Power Platform requests meter. You can read more about the meters on this link.
Via: The Register
