If, like me, you were watching for the calendar to tick over to the first of the quarter to see what would be new in the October 2013 PUR, then you may be disappointed in the changes that I’m about to detail. If you’re a slightly more well-balanced person, you’ll be relieved, as there are no major licensing changes revealed to get your head around.

I’ve decided to limit this blog post to the changes that affect us in October 2013 – there are some more changes that will make sense when Microsoft make announcements over the coming months and we’ll tackle those bits and pieces then.

The products that are added and deleted are very much what you’d imagine. We bid a final farewell to System Center Essentials 2010 and TechNet, while Windows 8 goes to 8.1, and System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2012 go to the new R2 versions with no changes to the licensing detailed. There’s more that’s changed on the CRM front simply because there’s a slightly different set of licences, and you’ll find updated sections both for the on-premise CRM Server 2013 and the new CRM Online offerings.

And then there are a few little bits and bobs that tidy up some loose ends. In particular, there’s confirmation that:

• Users licensed with an Office 365 ProPlus USL may activate Microsoft Office Mobile on up to 5 smartphones (page 82)
• External users invited to Yammer via external network functionality don’t need USLs (page 93)
• Users licensed for Exchange Online Archiving for Exchange Server that have Exchange Standard CALs may access Exchange Server 2013 Enterprise CAL features to support the use of Exchange Online Archiving for Exchange Server (page 72)
• There are a couple more use scenarios detailed for when a CAL is not required for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 (page 42)

And for this month, that’s about it!