Monthly Archives: July 2015

Visual Studio Licensing Changes

There are some great changes announced to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Online licensing starting on 1 September 2015.

As you may know, Visual Studio Online is essentially the online version of Team Foundation Server. VS Online is licensed with a User Subscription Model and TFS with a traditional Server/CAL model. The first big change to the licensing is that if you buy any Visual Studio Online subscription you get a TFS CAL for the named user of the subscription, which means that that user can access VS Online or TFS or both VS Online AND TFS.

Then there’s new pricing for the VS Online Basic subscriptions: the overall price has been reduced and volume discounts have been introduced. In practical terms, this means that 45 users using VS Online Basic today costs $800/month but with the new structure will only cost $310/month.

The details for these changes are in another of Microsoft’s Brian Harry’s great blog posts (http://bit.ly/1ItZxxl) where you’ll also find the timing of the changes for all types of customers

Wider Availability of Online Proctored Exams

The list of countries where online proctored exams are available is extended with (among others) the UK, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands joining the ranks.

This means that you can take your Volume Licensing MCP exam (74-678) in the comfort of your home/office monitored by someone offsite. Find full details here:  http://bit.ly/1BoRyg1.

Power BI Generally Available

Power BI is generally available from 24 July 2015 with just two licences available – a light “Power BI” which is free, and “Power BI Pro” which is $9.99 per user per month and includes the full set of features.

Some useful links: the announcement (http://bit.ly/1SaTYu1), details on the plans (http://bit.ly/1tPRiGA), and a useful FAQ including licence transitions (http://bit.ly/16fXTQh).

CRM Pricing and Licensing Updates

Updates on CRM pricing and licensing: promotional pricing for buying CRM Online Professional, Office 365 E3 and PowerBI together is extended until the end of September 2015, after that CRM Online Professional will be available at a discount for Office 365 customers, and CRM Server 2015 is now certified for deployment on Azure if you have Software Assurance.

Read the full article here: bit.ly/1MlRntb.

MSDN Administrators’ Guide – MPSA

Organisations buying Visual Studio with MSDN through the MPSA will use a brand new portal to manage their MSDN subscriptions.

There’s a just-released Administrator’s Guide which has 24 pages of useful knowledge including admin for large teams and external contractors, how to add administrators to the portal, as well as all the day-to-day tasks of assigning subscriptions along with instructions for the Bulk Upload facilities.

Get the guide here: http://bit.ly/1fYNT2V but note that existing subscriptions are still managed through VLSC, so the VLSC Admin Guide is worth a look too: http://bit.ly/1ucJ3hm.

Latest MPSA Updates

Customers can now buy Azure consumption services through the MPSA paying for what they use quarterly in arrears, rather than making an upfront monetary commitment as EA customers do.

Later in the year, on 1st September, customers will also be able to buy the Enterprise Cloud Suite (currently only available through the EA) and to purchase certain Online Services subscriptions in one, two or three year durations – all with price protection.

Get the background in this Microsoft blog post: http://bit.ly/1V2eThL.

SPLA track available in GLR

SPLA comes to GLR! If you’re already a fan of Get Licensing Ready then you’ll know that it’s a great way of testing your existing licensing knowledge as well as learning topics you’re less familiar with. Now there are four new modules for the Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA), so if you need to get up to speed with how Microsoft licensing works under SPLA, then download the handouts, watch the videos, and get a tick in the box by passing the exams: http://getlicensingready.com.