Monthly Archives: December 2013

Forefront UAG approaches End Of Life

The Forefront lineup continues to dwindle and now it’s Forefront UAG that’s soon to be End Of Life… Microsoft made the announcement on their Server and Tools Blog, where key takeaways are:

  • Forefront UAG will be removed from price lists on 1 July 2014
  • Customers with active SA on a Forefront UAG Server licence will receive a Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard licence, and
  • Any customers with active SA on UAG at 1 December 2013 may add new UAG server instances, users and devices without ordering additional licences.

The full article is here: http://bit.ly/1dxYXwb

Office 365 Switch Plans Wizard now supports switching between service families

If you’re given the wrong Office 365 plan for Christmas all is now not lost! The Switch Plans Wizard adds the capability to switch Office 365 plans across service families, so Small Business subscribers can switch to both Midsize and Enterprise plans, and Midsize Business subscribers can now switch to the Enterprise plans. Some of the restrictions remain: if you have more than 300 users you can’t use the Wizard; it’s still only for MOSA customers rather than customers who’ve purchased through Open; and any unsupported Wizardly switches must still be carried out manually. http://bit.ly/1exMwWl

Microsoft Webcast on Windows Embedded and its Licensing

Are you, like I was, completely out-of-date on your Windows Embedded licensing knowledge? It became available through VL programs on 1st July 2013 and if you’re not up to speed yet, this Microsoft webcast is half an hour well spent. Use it to find out about: Functionality – Embedded is now full Windows with EXTRA industry functionality (anyone else’s jaw drop?!); VL rules – similar to full Windows with upgrade licences requiring a qualifying OS, and adding SA within 90 days; SKUs/availability – useful slides show a SKU description, and channel and VL program availability. http://bit.ly/1hWs95r

Microsoft Webcast on Azure and its Licensing

Really rather good Microsoft webcast on Azure and its licensing. Useful takeaways:

  • pricing comparison (the Azure list price will always be the same as Amazon Web Services, and the Azure EA price will always be lower);
  • how to purchase Azure in an EA (make an upfront payment, pay any additional usage either annually – for up to 50% overage – or quarterly for more than that);
  • how existing EA customers are impacted (overage penalties go away immediately, existing quarterly payments remain in place with annual payments starting at renewal).

This webcast was originally aimed at Enterprise customers in the US and the licensing portion starts at 13:49 but I’d recommend the whole thing if you want to get a handle on the positioning of Azure too. http://bit.ly/19lQ5uq

New Version Rights with Software Assurance Explained

A useful reference article on New Version Rights on the Microsoft Volume Licensing Blog – especially perhaps if SAM is your thing. Key takeaways:

  • Use the Product List’s “Date Available” column to confirm the date needed for active SA for rights to run a particular version of the software
  • Confirmation that the latest version does not have to be deployed when SA expires for customers to retain rights to deploy it later – with perpetual licences of course.

Find the full article here: http://bit.ly/1ksOR2e

More New Volume Licensing Briefs for November 2013

Microsoft Software Dependency Guide

  • Updated to reflect current product versions as of November 2013
  • Previous brief: September 2012
  • http://bit.ly/1gzegI9

Base and Additive Client Access Licenses (CALs): An Explanation

  • Updated to reflect the current products as of November 2013
  • Previous brief: April 2013
  • http://bit.ly/1bQsSCV

Licensing the Core Client Access License (CAL) Suite and Enterprise CAL Suite

  • Updated to reflect the current products as of November 2013
  • Previous brief: April 2013
  • http://bit.ly/J3P8NJ

Licensing Windows Server 2012 R2 Remote Desktop Services

  • Updated to reflect Windows Server 2012 R2 licensing
  • Previous brief: September 2012
  • http://bit.ly/1cBdgAl

Licensing Microsoft Office Software in Volume Licensing

  • Updated to reflect the latest release of Microsoft Office
  • Previous brief: June 2011
  • http://bit.ly/14USCK6

Licensing Microsoft Server Products for Use in Virtual Environments

  • Updated to reflect Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft System Center 2012 R2, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2013
  • Previous brief: January 2013
  • http://bit.ly/J3STD0

Licensing the Windows Desktop Operating System for use with Virtual Machines

Licensing Windows Server 2012 R2 for use with Virtualization Technologies

Overview of the Changes to the December 2013 Volume Licensing Product List

This month I think it’s fairly obvious that the Product List Elves also work for Santa since they haven’t made a huge number of changes to the December Product List. It’s the Windows client that features most prominently so let’s start with that and take a look at what’s new and amended:

  • Windows 8.1 Enterprise Sideloading: This has been updated to Windows 8.1 and there’s a new 10 Pack available through Select and Open agreements like its 100 Pack big brother
  • Windows Multi-lingual User Interface Rights: There’s new confirmation on page 69 that although SA customers can use the MUI of prior versions of Windows, they can’t take MUI rights from Windows 8.1 Pro and use them with Windows 7 Pro, since MUI rights for Windows 7 were only available via Windows 7 Enterprise
  • Windows 8 Pro Re-imaging Rights: There’s a quirk in the OEM Windows 8.1 Pro licence which means that customers can’t downgrade to Windows 8 Pro through OEM. A new piece of text on page 117 confirms that Volume Licensing customers can re-image as if their Windows 8.1 Pro devices were licensed with Windows 8 Pro
  • Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry Enterprise: This is called out as a new SA benefit on page 68 for those customers with SA coverage for Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry Pro
  • Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry Pro Downgrade Rights: There’s a change on page 124 that gives additional downgrade rights to Windows 7 Professional for ATMs for Select/EA customers

There are a couple of things of note regarding Visual Studio 2013 and the new Deployment licences. Do check out the previous blog entry on this site if you want to know more about these new licences:

  • Visual Studio Deployment 2013 Standard and Datacenter editions are added to the Product List with availability showing in all licensing programs
  • There’s confirmation on page 113 that users with a Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 with MSDN subscription are entitled to one licence for Visual Studio Deployment 2013 Standard
  • Page 173 gives a note on the media eligibility for Visual Studio Deployment – the note being that there won’t be any physical media options, with the software only available via electronic download

And then a few final odds and ends:

  • The new Student Advantage program which offers Office 365 ProPlus free for students where the faculty and staff are already licensed for Office Professional Plus or Office 365 ProPlus makes its debut and details are included in the relevant education programs from page 39 onwards
  • Lots more Office 365 SKUs have been added to the Open and Open Value program as we’ve been expecting and this month’s Product List has been updated to show the availability through the different programs
  • And finally some new promotions have sprung into life – do check specifically if they’re running in your geography though. There’s one for customers with SA on Project/Visio Professional who can transition to the Office 365 Pro SKU; another for customers with SA on Project/Visio Standard who can step up to the Professional edition; and one offering discounts of purchases of Windows Embedded Industry 8.1 Pro

Additions to Visual Studio 2013 Licensing

I can remember writing the MLSS exam for Visual Studio a few years ago and being given the feedback that I’d made it just a tad too hard (slackers :-)) You’ll all look back fondly on those simple licensing days when you hear about the additions to Visual Studio 2013 licensing…

There are two new things to get your head around: Release Management and Visual Studio Online. I’ll give you the overview here and then some links if you have the urge for more information. Note that the Visual Studio 2013 Licensing Whitepaper has been updated for the third time this year and does include these changes. Download it here: http://bit.ly/1hkf7gn.

Visual Studio 2013 Release Management

The Release Management functionality is all about enabling additional capabilities in Team Foundation Server 2013 to automate complex application deployments to a variety of target environments… OK, OK, let’s do it in English! – if you’re in charge of getting a new release of your application to lots of different places, this functionality makes it significantly easier.

Now, let’s imagine you are indeed that person in charge of application deployment so that we can consider what needs to be installed for this magic to work and how you’d license it. First of all, from the server side, something called Release Management Server for Team Foundation Server 2013 needs to be installed, and there are no additional licensing requirements on top of TFS for that. You personally are then going to use the Release Management Client for Visual Studio 2013 to kick off the deployment process, and rights to that are included in most MSDN subscriptions. Then, any machine to which your application is going to be deployed needs to have Microsoft Deployment Agent 2013 installed and to be covered by a BRAND NEW licence. (Just checking you’re still awake!) This is the Visual Studio Deployment licence and it’s available in two flavours –Standard and Datacenter – which follow the Processor-based licensing model for Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2.

For homework, I’d recommend delving into a bit more detail on the new Visual Studio Deployment offerings at the following link where you’ll find pricing information and confirmation of the differences between Standard and Datacenter editions:

http://www.visualstudio.com/en-gb/products/how-to-buy-release-management-vs

And so to…

Visual Studio Online

If you’ve heard of Team Foundation Service, Visual Studio Online is the evolution of that. If not, we’ll start at the beginning anyway since it is, of course, a very good place to start.

So, in the beginning Visual Studio was a development environment on the desktop, then it expanded to include team development capabilities with Team Foundation Server, and now it’s been extended to the cloud with a collection of developer services hosted, of course, in Azure and called Visual Studio Online. If you want more information on some of the services that developers can now enjoy, I’d recommend the link below:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2013/11/13/visual-studio-2013-launch-announcing-visual-studio-online.aspx

But let’s investigate here how it’s licensed. That development organisation you were working for in the section above has decided that it’s going to embrace the cloud and so it signs up for a free Visual Studio Online account. You and your colleagues with your eligible MSDN subscriptions don’t need to purchase anything to link to this Visual Studio Online account and it comes with a certain amount of free shared monthly resources for build and load testing. If you want other users to join the account then you purchase them a Visual Studio Online plan (either Basic, Professional or Advanced) – you get five free Basic users with the account – and if you need more shared resources, perhaps virtual user minutes of cloud load testing (my personal favourite), then you buy that through a new or existing Windows Azure subscription.

For your final bit of homework, I’d recommend the following link to get some more detail on the different plans and for some useful FAQs:

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/visual-studio-online

Now, (rolls up sleeves) let me just go and update that MLSS exam…