Microsoft Purview

Microsoft announce a new brand family – Microsoft Purview – which combines the capabilities of the former Azure Purview and the Microsoft 365 Compliance products to provide a unified data governance and risk management solution. There are a whole host of name changes too – Office 365 Customer Lockbox becomes Microsoft Purview Customer Lockbox for example – and you can find all the new names and more information on Microsoft Purview itself in the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3lpmxGI.

Microsoft Viva Goals

Microsoft announce the private preview of Microsoft Viva Goals. This new Viva module is based on the acquired Ally.io product, and enables business goal setting and management. Viva Goals will be generally available in the third quarter of 2022 and will be included in the current Microsoft Viva Suite subscription at that time.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3lpl8Qs.

Licensing changes for hosted solutions

Microsoft announce some upcoming licensing changes for hosted solutions. These will allow partners to offer more solutions (notably hosted desktop solutions comprised of Windows and Office), and will allow customers more flexibility in where they use their existing licences.

This increased flexibility will come via changes to Software Assurance which will expand to allow customers to use their Windows, Office and Windows Server licences with any Cloud Provider partner on dedicated or multi-tenant hardware.

There’s no word yet on when exactly these changes will be implemented, but in the interim you can read the (very long) blog post here: https://bit.ly/3lkgvqD.

Dynamics 365 Business Central On-premises Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (May 2022) Dynamics 365 Business Central On-premises Licensing Guide. It’s just a small amendment with another table added to the list of those included for Team Members on page 14.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3wlg4To.

Microsoft Azure Customer Solution VL Brief

There’s an updated (April 2022) Microsoft Azure Customer Solution VL Brief. This is a useful document detailing the rules for ISVs when creating customer solutions built on Azure: essentially, ISVs should purchase the Azure services through an EA or (and this is the addition to this new document version) direct from Microsoft via the Microsoft Customer Agreement. Partners intending to just resell the Azure services should use the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program.

Find this updated document here: https://bit.ly/39sdBgW.

Microsoft Defender for Business

Microsoft announced back in November 2021 that Microsoft Defender for Business would be available in a couple of different ways for smaller businesses (see our blog: https://bit.ly/37p0cWi).

Here’s the update: in March 2022 it was included in Microsoft 365 Business Premium licences, and the second part of the plan comes together in May 2022 with Defender for Business available as a standalone licence costing $3 per user per month.

You can find the latest announcement here: https://bit.ly/3LSW1RO.

General Availability of Capacity Reservations

Microsoft announce the General Availability of Capacity Reservations for virtual machines.

A Capacity Reservation is linked to a specific virtual machine type running in a specific Azure data centre and ensures that there is always capacity available when you want to run a virtual machine of that type in that data centre.

They are priced the same as the Pay-As-You-Go prices for the VM, and if you have a matching Reserved Instance, that will automatically be applied to cover the charges of the Capacity Reservation.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3kiL53J, and a video explaining this new option here: https://bit.ly/3LFqVNr.