GA of Microsoft Places

Microsoft announce that Microsoft Places is now generally available. This new technology is based on Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot and is designed to help users have a better experience when they’re working from their office – by making it easy to coordinate in-person gatherings or to sync up spontaneously with colleagues also working from the office on a particular day. From a licensing perspective there are three tiers of features: core, enhanced, and additional. If you’ve got Microsoft 365 Business Basic/Standard/Premium, Office 365 F3/E1/E3/E5 or Microsoft 365 F3/E3/E5 licence then you have access to the core features, although you’ll also need a Teams licence if it’s not included in your plan. The enhanced features are available through a Teams Premium Add-on licence, and the additional features need a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence too.

You can find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4eIoUgX with lots of visionary information as to what Places might do for you, and the more pragmatic Learn documentation here: https://bit.ly/4i3m8ph.

Fabric SKU Estimator

The Fabric workloads all consume the same Fabric Capacity Units and there’s a new Fabric SKU Estimator tool to help customers identify the appropriate SKU for their needs, based on their data requirements, usage patterns, and workload combinations. The tool is currently in private preview.

You can find out more about the tool and apply to join the private preview here: https://bit.ly/4i0SmBM.

Microsoft 365 plan comparison for education

Microsoft’s plan comparison documents are fantastic for seeing which components are included in which Office 365/Microsoft 365 plans. They’re often updated monthly and the eagle-eyed among you have spotted that we didn’t post a November 2024 version for Education earlier in the month. Well, we’ve found it now and it’s uploaded for your download delight here: https://bit.ly/496JV3P.

Windows 365 Frontline Shared Mode

Microsoft announce that there’s a new Shared Mode for Windows 365 Frontline which is now in public preview. The original mode, now called Dedicated Mode, is aimed at users with staggered working hours. It allows you to provision personalised Cloud PCs for up to three users for each Windows 365 Frontline licence as long as those Cloud PCs are used non-concurrently. The new mode is for when you want to provision a single Cloud PC which lots of people need to use for short periods on an ad hoc basis, perhaps for a specific task. Only one person can use the Cloud PC at a time, and when they sign out all user data is deleted.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3CL02aW, the Learn documentation here: https://bit.ly/4fWXKnu, and a Microsoft Mechanics video here: https://bit.ly/3UZNsey.

SQL databases in Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft announce that there’s a new member of the Fabric workload family – SQL databases. They consume the same Fabric Capacity Units as the other Fabric workloads, with storage and backups billed separately. However, you can use SQL database in Fabric for free until 1 January, 2025 when compute and data storage charges begin, with backup billing starting on 1 February, 2025.

Find the announcement with an overview of notable features here: https://bit.ly/3Z0iq7n.

Windows 365 Link

Microsoft announce that Windows 365 Link is in public preview. This is a purpose-built Cloud PC device that’s designed to connect to Windows 365 in a fast and secure way. It’s built by Microsoft and will be available in April 2025 at a cost of $349. It will work with Windows 365 Enterprise, Frontline and Business editions.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4eMkS7u, the Learn documentation here: https://bit.ly/3APLhDg, and a Microsoft Mechanics video here: https://bit.ly/3CNH8jG.

Azure Local

Microsoft introduce Azure Local for customers to run Azure services on their own infrastructure. It’s enabled by Azure Arc and provides cloud-connected capabilities at a customer’s distributed locations. Think of it as the evolution of Azure Stack and, indeed, Azure Stack HCI has already been renamed to Azure Local.

There’s no change to the pricing or licensing for Azure Stack HCI customers, they’ll just get new Azure Local features as they’re available. At this time Azure Stack Hub and Azure Stack Edge remain, but there are “lower-spec hardware” and “disconnected operations” solutions in preview in Azure Local which will be the Azure Localisation of these Azure Stack components in due course.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4eCWKUr .

Windows 10 ESUs

Microsoft announce details of their Windows 10 Extended Security Updates program. Windows 10 reaches end of support on October 14, 2025 at which point 3 years of ESUs will be available for commercial and education customers.

They’ll cost $61 per device for commercial customers (https://bit.ly/3ArI2So) and $1 per device for education customers (https://bit.ly/3YTPL52), with prices doubling for year 2 and again for year 3. Customers running Windows 10 in Azure Virtual Desktop will be entitled to free ESUs.

In addition, there’s a new ESU program for consumers (https://bit.ly/4htLXi6) which is a 1-year option costing $30 per device.

Windows Server and System Center 2025

Windows Server and System Center 2025 were made generally available by Microsoft on November 1, 2024. This is a useful article (https://bit.ly/3CaBgAO) which gives more information on the new features of Windows Server 2025 including the fact that hotpatching (installing security updates without a reboot) will be available as a monthly subscription for Windows Server 2025 Standard and Datacenter editions.

Find out more about the public preview of Windows Server Hotpatch here: https://bit.ly/40AX1Eb.