BREAKING: Microsoft 365 Developer Program Changes - What You Need to Know + My Honest Take

Finally, finally, today we finally got that public statement that we've been waiting for from Microsoft for over a year. Today, we got an update on those Microsoft 365 developer tenants. Now, while we didn't get everything we wanted, and the announcement is a little bit light on details, and we didn't get anything today other than just some information, and here's what's coming, uh it's still a lot more than we had before today's announcement. And it's at least enough so many of us can make some decisions about uh our needs today. Now, in this video, I'm going to start with a very brief history of how we got to where we are today. and I'm going to explain Microsoft's announcement today on April 23rd, 2025 about those new developer tenants that we're going to get. I'm also going to share my opinions on the announcement and give you my recommendations for developer tenants if you need one today. The Microsoft 365 developer program has gone through some major changes in the past year. Now, my video from the summer of 2024, which has been the number one video on this channel every single day since I published it, which you can see linked here, I shared the full story. Now, in summary, in January 2024, Microsoft systems were compromised in a security incident referred to as midnight blizzard. This led to a lockdown of the developer program in late January and February of 2024. Microsoft made a public announcement at that time and a commitment to provide updates in September of 2024, but that timeline passed without any official announcement, just pure silence. And I published an article in early March of 2025 where I shared my idea for a developer program and I pleaded with Microsoft to please say something. I took your comments from that article. I took them with me to the annual MVP uh global summit at Microsoft in late March 2025 and I raised these concerns directly with Microsoft. Now that event is all wrapped up in NDAs and so I can't really share what the discussions were and what I learned from that. Uh but the result of that discussion I believe inspired or at least is at part inspired the announcement that we got today. So where are we today? Well before I go there I want to define two terms because this is going to get a little confusing. We have the developer tenants that we have that we you may have obtained uh and you may have today like I have one as part of the existing Microsoft 365 developer program prior to the lockdown or those tents that you got as part of the existing dev program and you if you were in one of those supported groups uh such as Visual Studio subscribers or uh people that were involved in one of the Microsoft AI cloud partner programs that included things like the ISV success program, the solution partner partner program, specialization experts, managed partners, and premier or unified support plan members. Now, I'm going to call those kind of tenants the legacy dev tenants. And the new offering that we're referring to from today's announcement, I'm going to call those future dev tenants. I wanted to call them 2025 dev tenants, but uh I think that we'll get them in 2025, but let's just be safe. The track record isn't so great, so I don't want to put a date on that just yet. Today on April 23rd, 2025, Microsoft released a public statement about the future of the Microsoft 365 developer program. I'll have a link to it in the uh notes below this video. Now, while it doesn't have all the details that we wanted, it is an important first step. So, let me give you the key updates. First, the dev the existing dev program or the legacy dev tenants, they're not dead. The program itself is just changing. Something new is coming to the dev program, which appears to be more closely tied to commercial Microsoft 365 tenants. I'll get to that in a minute. These new dev tenants or future dev tenants, they're likely going to require some sort of a payment. Now, they didn't say this in their post, but it means a group within Microsoft is no longer going to have to bear the internal cost of the program. And in my opinion, I think that's quite significant when you've got Wall Street wanting to see a return on the investment uh from Microsoft and their quarterly reports uh based on the bottom line because they've spent hundreds of billions of dollars uh investing in data centers and co-pilot and investments in OpenAI and other AI companies. Uh so they want to make sure that this isn't hurting their profitability. Okay, what else did they say? Well, because these tenants are going to be paid commercial tenants, you're going to be able to add those Microsoft 365 co-pilot licenses, those $30 per user per month with an annual commitment. That's something that we couldn't do with the legacy dev tenants. Now, another thing that they shared those legacy dev tenants from the existing program, they will not transfer to the new uh future dev tenants. So if you want to move content from your legacy dev tenant to one of these new future dev tenants to me that sounds like any other kind of a migration project between two different tenants better call orchestrate or one of those partners with a good reputation. Now personally I'm pleased with Microsoft's public statement today. Like I said, no, it's not everything that we wanted and it's light on details, but it is an acknowledgement of how big an issue this is to them, so they recognize it. And two, you can tell that they're actually doing something about it, and they shared enough for us to be able to make some decisions today until we learn more. I really appreciate that Microsoft has made a public commitment with a timeline. They committed to say something again or at least provide an update no later than September 2025. So, we'll have more information by then, but we may have information before that from them. Uh, we just don't know. Now, I am a little bit disappointed or I am very disappointed that it took over a year past their original announcement in Q1 of 2024 and it took eight it was we're eight months past that original promise date providing more information by September 2024. But I know the people at Microsoft who are involved in this. I know them personally and I trust them and I believe that they will follow through. You're just going to have to trust me at that statement. I can't give you any proof to that. Now, the commercial aspect that makes sense from a business perspective. In my opinion, if the cost ends up to being around $100 or $200 per year for a developer, as I suggested in my article, the Microsoft 365 dev tenants, a paid model could save them that I published back in early March of 2025. Again, I'll put a link to it uh below in the in the notes. I think that's reasonable for professional development work. I mean, I don't pay for my dev tools. I don't pay for VS Code. I don't pay for the SDKs, things I used to spend a lot more money for as my old uh MSDN subscriptions. I do pay for things like the services I use in Azure. I do pay for my internet service. I also have to pay for a co-pilot license if I want to do that. But to me, that's kind of the cost of doing business. Think about what your monthly spend is on your internet service or your mobile phone. This is just another cost of doing business. And I get it. We all want our cost to be down. Uh but it's just it's some things you just have to kind of acknowledge it's going to be there. Now, let me talk about some of the key benefits or at least as I see them of this new approach that they've shared today. The new paid future dev tenants solve several key problems. So, in my opinion, it solves a cost issue for Microsoft internally. Now they won't say this and maybe this is a little controversial to say but I got to believe internally nobody inside Microsoft wants to assume a big cost in their organization when Microsoft is so invested in AI today and they need to show a return on these hundreds of billions of dollars that they've invested. We've seen in the news the various like thousands of people that are being uh let go uh from Microsoft here and there uh but also not just Microsoft but all over the industry. And you got to believe that there's people they're just being very careful about saying, well, I don't want to assume a lot of cost for the company. Uh, which would which would not hurt. I don't need that kind of a red flag on me or that kind of attention. So, I got to believe that, you know, this is that being able to to have developers actually pay for this, that's got to help a little bit of this. Hey, you look at it and say that's not my problem. I get it. But there is also just the facts of life and you got to understand how things work. So, if that's what's going on, maybe I'm making it up, but if that's what's going on, I still think that this addresses that issue. And if not, okay, fine. Just dismiss what I'm saying here. Just be clear. That's my opinion. I'm not giving I'm not telling you that's what's going on inside Microsoft. It also allows Microsoft to better connect tenant identities to real people. That's a big issue going back to that original Midnight Blizzard hack from January of 2024 that caused the start of all this. In addition, it's going to enable developers to add those Microsoft 365 co-pilot licenses and other add-on licenses that wasn't possible with those legacy dev tenants. So, that's a big deal. And another benefit is that developers can eventually upgrade these future dev tenants for production use like adding an E3 or an E5 license. And that's going to remove the risk of using those dev tenants for non-development purposes. That's a huge benefit, huge benefit in my opinion. You can invest a lot in that dev tenant, realize like I want to keep this thing. I don't want to lose it. If you just keep paying for it and put a commercial license on it, they're not going to kill it. Okay, now here's a big one. Let's talk about those of you who need a dev tenant today and you've been holding on. So, if you need a developer tenant right now, you've got a few options and it's going to really depend on what type of work that you plan on doing with those. So, this is going to be the recommendations I'm going to give you are keep just keep something in mind here. We may know more over the next couple months. We're probably and likely going to learn a lot more by September. So, we don't I can't predict the future. And so, you have to kind of plan things and have a risk of like, what kind of a commitment do I want to make? What am I going to eat? What am I going to assume? And worst case, you're making a 12-month commitment on something. So, we're as I'm publishing this, it's late April. If the news comes out in September with something that would totally change it, then you've got September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, that's eight months that you are not going to be able to take advantage of the new stuff or say like, ah, I wish I would have not done something different. Well, I mean, it is what it is. You got to do you got to act and make the best decisions with the information available. So, that's what I'm going to try and give you the guidance on here. And in fact, this is what I do. I'll tell you what I do, but also tell you the kind of work that I do, and you can use that in your decision. So, first of all, try to get a free developer tenant, one of those legacy dev tenants. You can only do that if you qualify through some of these existing programs that Microsoft has shared that you uh of ways that they support getting a legacy dev tenant. And I shared those earlier. That's things like if you're a Visual Studio subscriber, uh Microsoft MVPs, uh like myself or regional directors or ISV people that are in that A ISV program or people that are in that AI cloud um uh partner programs, uh that I referenced earlier. Uh try to get it through one of those programs because you can get a dev tenant for free. But I'll tell you what my experience is here. Many developers have reported difficulties with this process and lack of support. I have talked to countless developers. I would venture to say hundreds of developers uh that have reached out to me and have tried this approach. Probably four out of five of them tell me it does not work. For example, when they contact the Visual Studio subscription support team because it wasn't working, the the people that are on that are on that support team, they don't have a clue what we're talking about about this dev program and they send them over to the Microsoft dev program support team and guess what? Those calls, they just keep ringing. Nobody ever picks up. So, I think it's kind of a waste of time, but you might as well give it a try because it's a free offering. Um, I've given that feedback to Microsoft, so who knows if they're if that'll get addressed, but uh I'm just speaking about how the real world is today. So, I'm assuming that you don't succeed with that path and uh based on the people I talk to, that's most of you. So, here's what I recommend. Keep in mind that this could change, as I said, in the coming months as Microsoft may share more updates in the coming months. But let's assume we don't hear anything until September 2025 when they promise more details. So here's what I suggest. Purchase a Microsoft 365 tenant for development use. Now I say for development use, that's just how you use it. You need a real commercial license. Now I would recommend starting with the business essentials license. Now you can get that in one of two ways. You can get that with a month-to-month commitment. So you can get it for two months and then cancel it. or you can get it where you pay monthly, but you make a 12-month commitment. So, the way that that works out, speaking in US dollars, it is $6 per month if you make a one-year commitment. So, that comes out to $72 uh for a one for one-year commitment uh paid monthly at $6 a month. If you want that month-to-month commitment that you can cancel at any time, that's only $7.20 a month. So, what I would do is I would get that $7.20 20 cents a month monthly commitment. Uh but you'll see I'm going to have a caveat for that in just a minute. All right. Now, that's going to let you do all kinds of stuff. SharePoint framework projects, Microsoft Teams apps, Microsoft Graph, uh Office add-ins, everything that you can think of because it is a real Microsoft 365 tenant. Uh the only thing about that though with that business essentials, make sure you see what the features are in that and compare those to features that you may need based on the work that you are doing. You can always upgrade your license at any point in time. Uh but you just need to make sure that you know you understand what you're missing out on with that because there may be some features that you need uh for work that you're doing with your clients like maybe things with like SharePoint Premium or so. Now, here's my caveat with this. What if you're doing Microsoft 365 co-pilot development? You want to build custom agents. Okay. Now, if you're doing that, you can add that $30 per user per month Microsoft 365 co-pilot license to that business essentials license. But remember, that's an annual commitment. So, if you're going to go that route, just the co-pilot license is going to cost you $360 over the 12 months. So, if you're doing that, if you're making that one-year commitment, you might as well also do the annual commitment on the business essentials license. So that means you got a 12month commitment total cost paid paid on a monthly basis, but the total cost is going to come out to about $432 uh US. So it's $30 per user per month plus uh for the co-pilot license and $6 per user per month for the business essentials license. So $36 a month for that entire for that entire 12 months. Okay, that's not that bad, right? That's not that bad, especially when you when when you think about like what your hourly rate is of most most developers that are out there. Um, and again, I'm doing all of this in US dollars. That's not a bad cost of doing business. I mean, I know how much my cell phone cost and how much my internet service cost and how much my coffee addiction costs. Uh, especially if I don't drink it at home and I go out and get one. Regardless, I digress. Now, there is an option. You may be thinking, what about those consumptionbased metered pricing for Microsoft 365 C-pilot? There's a big limitation with these that is not wellnown. If you're building custom agents and you only go with the consumption model in a single uh business essentials license, you're not going to get the semantic index. And that means that you don't get grounding from uh Microsoft graph data or custom knowledge that you may want to add and create as part of the Microsoft graph connectors that you can create. Why? Because Microsoft 365, it doesn't light up the semantic index where all that content is getting indexed into a semantic index that Copilot's going to query using semantic queries and it uses that for all the grounding aspects of copilot. They don't light up that semantic index in a tenant unless there is at least a single Microsoft 365 co-pilot license. That's the $30 per user per month. So if you plan on developing custom agents like a declarative agent with the team's toolkit as I do, you want more than just custom instructions and custom actions that call REST APIs to implement the rag model. The consumption model for for uh metered pricing for um uh co-pilot development in my opinion it's not worth it. You're if you're doing a lot of development, it's definitely not going to be worth it, but I don't think it's going to be worth it. So, in that case, you're kind of stuck with that other option I gave you, which is a 12-month commit commitment for the business essentials license and a 12-month commitment for a Microsoft 365 co-pilot license. That's what I have. I have that and I also have one of those legacy dev tenants, but my legacy dev tenant, I can't do co-pilot in that guy. So, that's what I have and that's how I treat all of my stuff. So, take it for what it's worth. All right, let's wrap this up. I'm looking forward to getting a lot more details about this new program in the coming months. And while we don't know what the exact pricing is or limitations yet, as I said, I think today's announcement is a very positive step. Now, I'm curious what questions you have about these changes. Do me a favor, drop a comment below this video, or I'm going to have an article that accompanies this as well with a little bit more information as I learn more and I will link to it also in the pen comment. drop a comment either on my article or in this YouTube video. I will do my best to answer every single question. If I don't know the answer, I'll reach out to Microsoft to find out. I kind of wish that announcement today had a lot more meat and details, a little more clarity. I think it it answers a lot of stuff, but it also creates a lot of questions. I can take those questions back to Microsoft and maybe the next time they update it or that when they update if they update this article, it'll all be based on questions that we have for them. Now, keep an eye on the pinned comment also on this video for future updates. Overall, I believe this is good news and a step in the right direction for the Microsoft 365 developer community. I know you want more. I know you want more details. I know you want more features, but facts. If we look at the facts, yesterday when I went to bed, I had less information than I do now. Today, I have a lot more information. I have a lot more clarity. I can make better and more solid recommendations for my for my customers and my students. That's a good story. I also am optimistic on the stuff they shared and the fact that they said that they would share at least a lot more by September of 2025. Remember what I said too. I know the people personally who are involved in this. I've spoken at length with them in this. They are in they are in positions that they can make a difference inside of Microsoft. I trust them. I have no reason not to trust them. I've got I've known them for a long long time. I have a lot of confidence in what they're telling me and that they're being completely honest on the stuff they said. We've had very direct and very frank conversations with that. I'm not going to share all of that stuff. That's not really appropriate. But you just if you trust me, then trust me on this. All right. I am I'm very positive. I'm very happy today. All right. You just got to take it for what it's worth. All right. I'm going to wrap it up. Thanks for watching. I'm looking forward to seeing you in my next video. And I hope to hear from you in the comments below. Thanks a lot. Share this video. Help other developers in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem learn more about what's going on with the dev program. See you later, everybody.