Since my somewhat detailed post, which was an on-topic reaction to this announcement that contained no profanity or other community-guidelines violations that I could tell, appears to have been deleted without any explanation. Could someone from Microsoft or a moderator of this community please explain to me the opinion of these changes I'm allowed to have?
EDIT (Original Post, however I did remove the part where I called the move a bait-and-switch, stated that Microsoft should be ashamed, and compared their 5-year grace period to adding sugar to poison, just in case those statements crossed a line):
Microsoft should recognize the damage this move has done to their brand. They have been selling us on this idea of "low-code-no-code" and then pulled the carpet out from under their customers by jacking up the price to an unreasonable degree. They have taken what was a platform full of promise and potential and turned it into a cash grab. It doesn't matter which team this decision comes from, at the end of the day, it is coming from Microsoft. If they don't have the ability to oversee and to make sure their teams are working together and not hurting each other's customers, then they have bigger problems than PowerApps users having access to AzureSQL. The Powerapps-AzureSQL scenario being "too good to be true" and in need of adjustment is just giving them too much benefit of the doubt. I'm paying for PowerApps, I'm paying for AzureSQL, both products are within the Microsoft ecosystem, why in the world do I then need to pay a third time to connect them? And why does connecting the products cost 3x as much as the individual products themselves?
But this decision doesn't just damage Microsoft's brand and the trust they'd built with us. With this decision, Microsoft has injured my own brand and credibility with my company. I've spent the past year learning, developing, and selling my company on the idea of the Power Platform and to embrace the tools that we are paying for with our Office 365 and Azure licenses. My company has invested in my time and paid for training on the Power Platform, gaining me skills that I now won't be able to utilize. I have to go back to them and explain that our new processes involving the Power Platform are only a stopgap, because in 5 years the cost of continuing to use them will explode exponentially.
We can't just go back to using Sharepoint as our data source, it is too insecure. And the cost of the new licensing model is quite frankly out of our reach. We aren't a large company. The potential savings from continuing to use the Power Platform to streamline our processes doesn't come close to covering this new cost of the product. There is no scenario where we can afford this.
What could they have done instead?
- Implement the new plans, but leave the AzureSQL and AzureBlobStorage connectors as Standard instead of Premium. We're already paying for those products, the ability to use PowerApps to connect to them shouldn't need covered by a third fee.
- Make Premium connectors ala carte/Pay as you go. Let me pay a reasonable fee to add a premium connector to my tenant. I don't need ALL the premium connectors. I don't need MOST of the premium connectors. I really only need one or two. In our current setup, there are apps that we could benefit from, but I haven't built because the connector needed for it is premium, and the cost to get access to that single connector is too high, because I have to buy access to ALL the connectors to get it.
- Have a much cheaper license for App/Flow USERs, similar to the cheaper F1 license for O365. I don't need everyone in my tenant to have the ability to make apps. I could see paying a higher fee for Maker/Admin licenses and having a minimal, F1-style fee for User licenses.
- Make the Per-App license just that, a license Per-App, not Per-App-Per-User.
I am pressing on with my PowerApps development for the time being, with the hopes that Microsoft course-corrects on this. I know there is more to the new licenses than just the AzureSQL and Blob Storage connectors, but from my perspective, making those connectors Premium is what places the new licenses out of my reach.
I've contemplated just building a bunch of blank template PowerApps/Flows and adding these connectors to them, for future development after the Oct 1 mark, but I feel like this would be cheating the system, and I'd rather not treat Microsoft the way they are treating us.
