If you need to use VLSC to carry out tasks such as managing licences, downloading software, and activating and managing SA benefits, then this site with its collection of How-to videos and User Guides may be just what you’ve been looking for: http://bit.ly/2rCqwmZ.
Mobile Apps included in Office 365 Plans
Microsoft announce that the Office Mobile Apps will now be available with full editing capability for users with Office 365 Business Essentials, E1 and F1 subscriptions.
Find the full details here: http://bit.ly/2IEjt7N.
Azure Monetary Commitment Overage Payments
Microsoft make changes to when customers are invoiced for overage on their Azure Monetary Commitment. Historically, this has been quarterly or annually, dependent on agreement type, which was changed to quarterly for all customer and agreement types in December 2017. Now all overage will be charged at the end of each month.
See page 50 of the May 2018 Product Terms for the official wording.
Azure Reserved Instance Options
Microsoft add wording to the May 2018 Product Terms document to explain some of the key terms associated with Azure Reserved Instances: Exchange, Cancel, and Reassignment. Find the detail on page 50.
Azure Reserved Instances and Server Subscriptions
Microsoft announce that Reserved Instances are immediately available through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and that Server Subscriptions will be available in the near future. These two offerings will be perfect partners since they will allow customers to enjoy the very best prices for virtual machines running in Azure.
Reserved Instances are a way for customers to pay for the compute part of a virtual machine and Server Subscriptions for Windows Server and SQL Server will enable customers to acquire a subscription for the software to run in their virtual machines. Both offerings are paid for upfront for a 1 or 3-year term, and used together may enable customers to save up to 80% compared to the price of an equivalent virtual machine paid for on a consumption basis.
There are plenty of resources available if you want to find out more and this page (http://bit.ly/2jYx23P) includes links to an FAQ, an overview presentation, a webinar and a sales sheet. It’s definitely worth a look!
Understanding Reserved Instance Pre-Payment
If you’re running full-time virtual machines in Azure then pre-paying for the compute power via an Azure Reserved Instance is a good way of saving money. The pre-paid amount is automatically applied to your running virtual machines and if you want to find out more about how this (apparently magic) process works, then this article is worth a read: http://bit.ly/2HKvLsA.
Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing Guide
There’s a brand new (March 2018) Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing Guide covering the licensing of this new ERP solution for small and medium-sized businesses. Use it to find out about the different licence types (Essential, Premium and Team Members), licensing external users (included in the internal users’ licence rights), and whether users are allowed access to on-premises servers (they’re not). Find the guide at the bottom of the Dynamics 365 section in our Licensing Guides emporium: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.
Azure Roadmap
The Azure Roadmap is a useful resource if you need to know what’s new and coming next in Azure. Find it here: http://bit.ly/2IDdxbB.
Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide
There’s a new (March 2018) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide covering the licensing of the online versions of the products and incorporating the new Sales Professional User SL and how the new Dynamics 365 for Marketing app is licensed.
From a Dynamics 365 for Sales perspective the new Sales Professional User SL gives access to a subset of the functionality that the Enterprise User SL does, and pages 10/11 give an overview comparison between the two licences while a new Appendix C on page 34 expands on this. It’s also worth knowing that the Sales Enterprise and Sales Professional application modules may not be deployed on the same instance, but may be deployed on the same tenant, and pages 9/10 elaborate on this with some useful diagrams and tables.
You’ll find detail about Dynamics 365 for Marketing on page 10 where it’s explained that this new app is licensed per organisation and is based on the number of contacts in the Customer Engagement database. You can license Dynamics 365 for Marketing as a standalone app or as an add-on to either the Customer Engagement Plan or one of the Customer Engagement apps. In all cases you get an entitlement of 10,000 contacts, and can buy additional contacts in increments of 5,000 if required. The Customer Engagement Plan Applications Use Rights table in Appendix B on page 28 has been updated to include the Marketing app too.
Other changes in this licensing guide include the addition of some useful tables: find additional services and software on page 20, and default instance and infrastructure capability for the Customer Engagement apps on page 22, and for the Unified Operations Plan apps on page 23.
As usual, this guide is added to our ever-growing collection of Microsoft Licensing Guides hosted here: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.
Dynamics 365 for Marketing
Dynamics 365 for Marketing is available. If you want an overview of what this new application does, then this page is useful, with both an overview video and further written detail and pictures: http://bit.ly/2EvrzJQ. From a licensing perspective, it’s licensed across an organisation as a standalone application for $1,500 per month for up to 10,000 contacts, or as an add-on to the Customer Engagement Plan or one of the Customer Engagement apps for $750 per month. An additional 5,000 contacts can be added for $250 per month. Find the pricing details here: http://bit.ly/2JuuNRF.