Microsoft announce that from 1 October, 2019 there will be changes to how dedicated hosted cloud services are licensed. Currently there aren’t any specific rules for dedicated cloud services and so the rules used have been the ones that have always applied to on-premises servers managed by an outsourcer but dedicated to a customer’s use. These rules state that as long as the hardware is dedicated to a customer, then a customer can bring their own licences to that hardware. There has been no requirement for Software Assurance or any other sort of eligibility criteria.

Existing licences retain these rights, but licences purchased after 1 October, 2019 will be subject to new rules, when used with dedicated hardware from a small set of hosting organisations defined as “Listed Providers” – Microsoft, Alibaba, Amazon, and Google. Essentially, you’ll now need Software Assurance on your licences. The License Mobility benefit is updated to include both multi-tenant and dedicated services from these providers, and the Azure Hybrid Benefit is updated to include deployment to the newly announced Azure Dedicated Host.

For the full story, see the Microsoft article here: http://bit.ly/2YTJ70E and find a useful FAQ in the Core Infrastructure section of our Licensing Guides emporium: http://bit.ly/LicensingGuides.