Monthly Archives: September 2015

August 2015 MPSA Licensing Manual

The MPSA Licensing Manual is updated for some of the key changes that have happened recently.

This August 2015 document includes text on page 4 that confirms that there are no minimums when purchasing Azure consumption services through the MPSA, and there’s an extremely useful paragraph at the top of page 6 that details how the new multi-year duration options work.

Essentially, certain Online Services are available to order up to the second or third Purchasing Account Anniversary and subsequent orders of the same service need to align to the original multi-year order, but are eligible for best price protection too.

Get the document here: http://bit.ly/1QfuR3U.

Licensing Office with RemoteApp

If you want to share Office applications from the cloud then there’s a good article from Microsoft that explains how you need to license this scenario.

Essentially you need an Office 365 ProPlus subscription and an Azure RemoteApp USL – note that a traditional Office Professional Plus 2016 licence isn’t an option.

The article also covers notions such as shared computer activation, Visio and Project, and an overview of how you get started with Office 365 and Azure RemoteApp. It’s definitely worth a read – find it here: http://bit.ly/1MpF6lB.

Office 2016 Availability

Today is the worldwide release of Office 2016 for Windows and there are details in this Microsoft blog post on the new features that you can expect: http://bit.ly/1NRcRzd.

Office 2016 for Mac is also available as a one-time purchase for the first time – since its launch in July it has only been available to Office 365 subscribers. And, as if that wasn’t enough, 2016 versions of Project and Visio are available too.

September 2015 MPSA Changes

Microsoft announce that there are two big updates for the MPSA from 1st September 2015, with the addition of:

  • Enterprise Cloud Suite (ECS)
  • Multi-year subscriptions for Online Services

ECS was previously only available via the Enterprise Agreement (EA) and includes Office 365 E3, the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) and Windows per User, as well as a number of other services– see more info here http://bit.ly/13umyz1.

The second addition enables MPSA customers to order one, two, or three-year subscriptions for certain Online Services with price protection for all incremental orders.

The Microsoft WWLP blog post is here http://bit.ly/1F9uB61