Core CAL and Enterprise CAL Suites licensing guidance

There’s an updated (February 2025) Core CAL And Enterprise CAL Suites licensing guidance document from Microsoft.

There aren’t many changes from the previous (November 2020) version because, to be honest, not much has changed in the CAL Suites world. However, note that a couple of errors have been introduced into the table on page 3.

Find this document here: https://bit.ly/3FgONIK.

Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Microsoft 365 E5 Security

Microsoft announce that Microsoft 365 Business Premium is now an eligible prerequisite for Microsoft 365 E5 Security.

Microsoft 365 Business Premium already includes core security solutions for SMBs and the announcement article does a good job of explaining exactly where the security coverage is enhanced with this Add-on licence.

Find the relevant article here: https://bit.ly/4ivoFrS.

Microsoft Sustainability Manager licensing guidance

There’s a new (February 2025) Microsoft Sustainability Manager licensing guidance document from Microsoft. This is one of the Microsoft Cloud industry solutions and it’s licensed with an Essentials or Premium tenant license costing $4,000 or $12,000 per month respectively, and $0 Essentials or Premium User SLs.

The licensing guidance document has information on included Dataverse capacity, dependencies on other products, as well as an FAQ section, and you can find it here: https://bit.ly/3ECiNP3.

Power Platform Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (February 2025) Power Platform Licensing Guide with useful new tables on page 19. These give extra information on how messages are billed in Coplot Studio and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, in particular the new Tenant Graph grounding for messages.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/42IxZUQ.

CAL Suite Bridges licensing guidance

There’s an updated (January 2025) CAL Suite Bridges licensing guidance document from Microsoft. Bridge CALs were first introduced in 2011 to help Enterprise Agreement customers maintain their enterprise-wide commitment to the Core and Enterprise CAL Suites as they moved to the cloud. This document has an overview, some scenarios, as well as tables taken from the Product Terms for CAL/CML equivalencies and prerequisites.

Find this document here: https://bit.ly/3Ql8std.

Base and Additive CALs licensing guidance

There’s a new (February 2025) Base and Additive CALs licensing guidance document from Microsoft which is an evolution of the October 2020 Microsoft Server Base and Additive CALS Overview Licensing Brief document. It’s broadly the same information covered, but all the diagrams showing the layered structure of Base and Additive CALs are removed to be replaced with more comprehensive explanations and links to the Product Terms.

Find this new document here: https://bit.ly/4b5Lzn3.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (February 2025) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide with just one small change: there’s a link to the Outsourcing Software Management Licensing Brief added to the Dual Use Rights section on page 45.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/4jMma5R.

Windows Server 2025 Licensing Guide

There’s a slightly updated Windows Server 2025 Licensing Guide which corrects a couple of errors. Firstly, the CAL table on page 12 now has the correct combination of CAL and Server versions, and secondly the requirement for 16 Core licences per customer is removed on page 4 – although it remains in another couple of places.

Grab this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/40JyIlW.

Dynamics 365 Contact Center licensing guidance

There’s a new (February 2025) Dynamics 365 Contact Center licensing guidance document from Microsoft. It’s got the fundamental licensing information you’d expect as well as useful sections on example scenarios, integration with other products, and FAQs.

Find this document here: https://bit.ly/42QmpHi.