Monthly Archives: January 2016

November 2015 Visual Studio Licensing Guide

There were some changes to Visual Studio licensing in November 2015 and the Licensing Guide is updated to reflect the two main changes: Visual Studio Online is renamed Visual Studio Team Services, and there are now monthly and annual subscriptions available for Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise – the guide does a good job of detailing which MSDN benefits you get with these new subscriptions.

Read our summary of the changes to the licensing here: http://wp.me/p3K5IZ-iF and download the new guide in the Developer Tools section of our Licensing Guides emporium here: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides.

Azure Multi-Factor Authentication

There’s now an extra option available for purchasing Azure Multi-Factor Authentication and it’s added to the January 2016 Product Terms document (page 53) as a user-licensed product available through Volume Licensing programs. The other options are to pay for it out of Azure Monetary Commitment on either a consumption basis per 10 authentications or on a per user basis with an unlimited number of authentications allowed per month. This page is a good resource: http://bit.ly/1JUVugq.

Shared Computer Activation for Service Provider’s shared servers

In September 2014, Microsoft introduced Shared Computer Activation (SCA) so that Office 365 ProPlus could be installed on a server and then used by users with shared hardware.

There were restrictions on the server which was used – if it wasn’t a customer-owned server then it had to be a Service Provider server dedicated to the customer’s use, or Windows Azure.

From January 2016 the rules have changed, and now shared Service Provider servers are eligible too – as long as the partner meets the requirements to be an “Authorized SCA Partner”.

You can see this change detailed on page 19 of the January 2016 Online Services Terms document, and a great resource for both customers and partners is the SCA site here: http://bit.ly/23675Q0

Licensing School ONLINE: Latest Courses

Back in November 2015 we announced Licensing School ONLINE where we wanted to run proper training courses online. I say “proper” – our goal was to not just offer you presentations, but rather to run fully interactive training sessions that keep you engaged and interested, and end up being a great learning experience.

We started with our SAM MCP preparation course and the feedback was spontaneously fabulous with attendees giving rave reviews. So, we’ve extended our range of courses to include “Buying and Licensing Azure Services” and an online 74-678 Exam Preparation course. Let me explain how this second one will work!

If you do this course with us in-person then it’s an intensive (and fun!) full day, but we wanted a different approach for an online session. So we’ve split the content into three 2-hour sessions and we’ll be running those sessions at different times. There’s “Microsoft Products and their Licensing”, “The Microsoft Volume Licensing Programs” and “SA, Tools, and Exam Tips”. You can attend whichever sessions you want to – they all stand alone, but you’ll get a discount if you sign up for all 3, of course. The first sessions run in early February 2016 – you can find out the exact dates and times below. Costs are £55/$79 per person per session or £125/$189 for all 3 – simply use the discount code ALLMODULES when you book on the SA session and you’ll be charged just £15/$22 for this module.

 

We’ve got further dates for the SAM MCP 70-673 Exam Preparation course too. This is a 2.5 hour session where you’ll receive a workbook to download and complete, as well as 14 days of unlimited support from the trainer via email to assist you with your exam preparation. The next dates are 21 and 22 January 2016 and it’s £65/$99 per person. Register here: http://bit.ly/70-673LSO.

 

And our third online offering is “Buying and Licensing Azure Services” where we’ll teach you everything you need to know about how these slightly mysterious services are licensed and then acquired through the various licensing programs – all of them being slightly different of course! This is a one hour session and the next dates are at the end of January costing £25/$39 per person. Register here: http://bit.ly/AzureLSO.

 

There will, of course, be further sessions available in the near future. If you’ve got a tricky topic you think would make a good session then email us at info@licensingschool.co.uk and we’ll add it to our list!

Essential Licensing Questions…

I wonder if you saw our social media posts just before Christmas? We had a bit of Christmas fun with licensing (yes really!) and some days we challenged you to pick out the real Microsoft products from a list and to tell us how they were licensed – my favourite of all time has to be Visual Studio LightSwitch – licensed of course per developer. Other days we offered sage pieces of perhaps forgotten licensing lore – how on earth do you remember that with SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, Licence Mobility was included with the server licence rather than as an SA benefit? And sometimes we asked you how good your knowledge of previous versions was, and of course we picked that oft-renamed product Skype for Business Server aka Lync Server, or Office Communications Server, or even further back as Live Communications Server.

It was fun and we gave away lots of prizes, but what was the point?!

Well, as licensing gets more and more complicated and there’s more and more to remember we’ve realised that there’s a need for a set of reference books where you can quickly and easily look up answers to licensing questions. It’s the sort of question that you know must be answered in the old Product Lists somewhere but you’re time pressured and you just want the answer NOW. As an example, let’s say you’re doing/preparing for an audit and you come across Windows Server 2008 R2 HPC licences with SA – now what was the grant for Windows Server 2012???

We’re very pleased to announce that throughout 2016 we’ll be releasing a new range of books entitled “Essential Licensing Questions” which will, of course, include the answers(!) as well as the official Microsoft place you can go to to extract the full text if you need it. Now, if you’re wondering about the question I posed above… For every two Windows Server 2008 R2 HPC licences with active SA, a customer was granted one Windows Server 2012 Standard Processor-based licence and you’d go to page 163 of the September 2012 Product List to confirm it.

We’re expecting the first book – Essential Licensing Questions on Windows Server – to be released in January 2016, so watch out to see how you can be involved. At this point we’d love to hear from you if you want to be a reviewer for this first book – just email info@licensingschool.co.uk and we’ll send you a book as soon as it’s available.

Exciting times!

Microsoft Hosting and CSP Newsletter

The December 2015 Hosting and Cloud Service Provider newsletter is out.

It’s got links to recent topics of interest in the hosting world: the launch of E5, licensing changes for Windows Server and System Center 2016, and the changes to Licence Mobility for SA rights which allow customers to fail-over to shared hardware.

There are also links to useful CSP resources and the next quarterly licensing webcast on 20 January, 2016.

Sign up for this free newsletter here: http://bit.ly/1iVEvxV.

Skype for Business Online Licensing Overview

Skype for Business Online Licensing OverviewSkype for Business Online has some key new components: Meeting Broadcast, Cloud PBX, PSTN Conferencing, and PSTN Calling.

If you want a summary of how to license these individual components and what to purchase if you’re already licensed for an Office 365 plan, then Microsoft’s Skype for Business Online Licensing Overview page is a good resource: http://bit.ly/1UmbTup.

This page also has some great links if you want a bit more detail on the new components themselves. Worth a look!

Microsoft Volume Licensing Newsletter – December 2015

The Microsoft Volume Licensing Newsletter for December 2015 is released, with a focus on Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics.

There’s confirmation of the licensing model (CML) and its availability as a standalone licence or included in some suites (Enterprise CAL, EMS, ECS) where customers with active subscriptions/SA get rights to ATA from 1 August 2015.

There’s also a link to a (surprisingly!) useful ATA FAQ page and don’t forget you can find the ATA Licensing Datasheet with all of the other Microsoft Licensing Guides here in the Core Infrastructure section: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides.

Read the newsletter and sign up for future issues here: http://bit.ly/1SPW0N8.

CRM Server 2016 Licensing Guide

There’s a refreshed (December 2015) Licensing Guide for CRM Server 2016, so here’s a summary of the changes:

  • Inclusion of the new Employee Self-Service USL: this is the fifth CRM Online USL with the lowest level of access, aimed at users who need to do basic tasks such as read Knowledgebase articles and submit cases, and it’s included in this guide since it gives access to an on-premises CRM deployment too (page 9)
  • Inclusion of the CRM Online Professional Add-on to Office 365 USL for SA: this offers access to the CRM Online Professional set of capabilities for users who are already licensed with Office 365 E3, E4, E5, Business Premium or ECS and the on-premises CRM Professional CAL with SA (page 19)
  • Removal of EA transitions for customers with on-premises CRM licences: the recommendation is now to purchase the relevant CRM Online For SA Add-on (page 20)
  • Extra detail about purchasing CRM 2016 under SPLA: there’s an overview of how SPLA deployments differ to an on-premises deployment and a list of available SALs (pages 16/17)
  • Inclusion of Interactive Service Hub: this facility is aimed at users in customer service roles helping them to pull together all customer interactions, and access is included in the CRM Server 2016 Basic and Professional CALs (page 12)
  • There’s also a note about the recent acquisitions of FieldOne, Adxstudio, and Fantasy Sales Team (FST) and the fact that their capabilities are not available through Volume Licensing agreements at the moment (page 12)

You can find this guide in the Dynamics section of our Licensing Guides emporium: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides.

December 2015 Software Dependency Guide

The Microsoft Software Dependency Guide is updated for December 2015.

This very useful guide gives a list of Microsoft software and the associated dependent Microsoft software licences that are required to use that software: for instance if you install Project Server 2013 then users also need to be licensed for Windows Server, SharePoint Server and SQL Server.

This guide is completely up to date with all of the 2016 versions of software listed and new products such as Advanced Threat Analytics 2016 added.

Find the guide here: http://bit.ly/1gzegI9.