Monthly Archives: July 2014

Licensing Resources for Dynamics AX 2012 R3

There’s an updated (May 2014) Licensing Guide for Dynamics AX 2012 R3. As well as the updates you’d expect which cover the (slight) changes in R3 licensing, there are new sections added for:

  • licensing Companion Apps
  • running AX 2012 R3 on Azure
  • the License Sizing Estimator tool (to estimate the configuration of different types of CALs that an organisation will need)
  • licensing guidance for specific industries covering warehouse and transportation management, retail and e-commerce, and public sector.

Get the guide here: http://bit.ly/1nHIbCq.

Two new members of the Dynamics AX 2012 R3 family are added to the July 2014 Product Use Rights document: the Store Server licence and the Standard Commerce Server Core licence. If you’re curious about the scenarios where these licences are needed (and who wouldn’t be) then the Retail and eCommerce Licensing Guide from Microsoft is a good read as it covers the licensing requirements for traditional brick and mortar stores, Mobile POS, and eCommerce scenarios. Get the guide here: http://bit.ly/1oiTFgF.

Overview of the Changes to the July 2014 Volume Licensing Product List

There aren’t a huge number of changes this month to the Product List, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to take a closer look at a couple of the products which have been removed, and to report on what’s succeeded them and how you now acquire the equivalent services.

The first to go is Forefront Online Protection for Exchange which we’ve affectionately (?) called FOPE in the past. There’s a TechNet article (http://bit.ly/1nI6Kz2) which confirms that Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is the latest version of FOPE. You can acquire a standalone User Subscription Licence for about $1 a month (http://bit.ly/1kgEl44), or page 13 of the July 2014 Product List confirms that an Enterprise CAL Suite licence with active SA includes rights to EOP.

Exchange Hosted Encryption also leaves us. This msdn page (http://bit.ly/1qFm0Ad) tells us that Office 365 Message Encryption is the new version of EHE, and an announcement on the Office Blog (http://bit.ly/1nJ8AkI) gives details on how you get rights to this message encryption service.

And this brings me to another change to be aware of this month: the service that started off as “Windows Azure Active Directory Rights Management” has had a few name changes, and this month it’s more simply known as “Microsoft Rights Management” and a User Subscription Licence for this service will give you access to Office 365 Message Encryption. However, don’t forget the new and shiny Enterprise Mobility Suite, since that’s another way to acquire rights to Microsoft Rights Management too (http://bit.ly/1mQcAK9).

Finally, there are a couple of products added – the Support offerings for Microsoft Dynamics Marketing and Microsoft Social Listening. This link in the Product List (http://bit.ly/1rJonQO) is worth a look if you need to know more about these support options.

MPSA: Some Key Dates

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So, the retirement of Select Plus has been announced (Microsoft post – http://bit.ly/1k5EWp7) and MPSA is set to take over as the licensing program of choice for customers with 250 PCs who need a transactional agreement.

Today (July 2014) Software Assurance isn’t available in the MPSA but that’s all about to change and it WILL be available from 1 September 2014 (Microsoft post – http://bit.ly/1yLT61N).

This slide from WPC shows some other key milestones on the roadmap with Government and Academic offerings arriving in the March 2015 timeframe and Enterprise offerings sometime in Q1 of FY16.

Upcoming Visual Studio Online Licensing Changes

There will be a new “Stakeholder” licence available for Visual Studio Online accounts from mid-August. This free licence will give access to a restricted feature set and there will be an unlimited number of Stakeholder users allowed.

Read the full Microsoft article here (http://bit.ly/1m7zj4a) and get the heads up on other changes to Visual Studio licensing that may come to pass.

Evolving Office 365 plans for SMB customers

Office 365 plans for SMB customers: look out for some new plans & some changes to existing ones. 3 new Office 365 plans launch on 1 Oct 2014 – O365 Business (Office apps & OneDrive), O365 Business Essentials (cloud services & OneDrive), and O365 Business Premium (everything above). Changes include increasing the 25 user limit to 300 from 1 Oct 2014 for O365 Small Business/Small Business Premium plan customers, & reducing the price of the Midsize plan for new customers from 1 Aug 2014.

The full Microsoft article is here http://bit.ly/1sPhexj with some useful diagrams & information on migration.