Author Archives: licensingschool

New Office VL Brief

There’s an updated (June 2016) “Licensing Microsoft Office software in Volume Licensing ” VL Brief which is updated for Office Online Server. This is the successor product to Office Web Apps Server 2013 and provides browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote from on-premises environments.

For details on the licensing, the FAQs on page 8 are useful, but in summary: there are no licences required for viewing documents, but create/edit/save rights are an SA benefit and included in an Office 365 ProPlus subscription.

However, there’s an exception which means that licences bought without SA before 1 August 2016 don’t need SA before 1 August 2019.

Find the guide in the Desktop section of our Licensing Guides emporium: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.

Azure Information Protection

Microsoft announce Azure Information Protection, a new service that builds on Azure Rights Management (Azure RMS).

General Availability is expected later this year, when Azure RMS customers will receive expanded capabillities.

We’re told that more information on how to buy Azure Information Protection will be available closer to General Availability.

Read the full announcement here: http://bit.ly/28UrDEd.

Visual Studio Standard Subscriptions

Name change alert! You might be familiar with MSDN Subscriptions and it’s useful to know that they’re now called Visual Studio Standard Subscriptions. Note that this is distinct from a monthly or annual subscription to Visual Studio Professional/Enterprise which is called a Cloud Subscription.

There are two useful documents which might help you at this transition time: “Understanding Visual Studio Standard Subscriptions” and “Managing Visual Studio Standard Subscriptions”.

You can find them with the rest of the Microsoft licensing guides here: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.

CRM Online Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (May 2016) CRM Online Licensing Guide with three main changes.

First of all, Mobile Offline is added (page 16): this gives offline views and offline search and is licensed as part of the CRM Online Professional USL as long as you have at least 5 of these USLs.

Then on page 12 there’s the Field Service Add-on: an Add-on USL for users licensed with at least a CRM Online Basic USL who will engage in Field Service activities.

And finally, on page 20 there are some new licences for organisations that want to extend their CRM solutions to cloud hosted web portals. There’s a Portal Add-on USL for any user with an existing CRM Online USL, and then the option to purchase additional page views (500,000 per month) if required.

Get the guide here: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.

Updated Server Virtualisation VL Brief

There’s an updated (June 2016) “Licensing Microsoft server products for use in virtual environments” Volume Licensing Brief.

It’s updated for Exchange Server 2016 (no changes to the licensing), SQL Server 2016 (Business Intelligence edition removed, requirement to assign a minimum of 4 licences per processor rather than using the Core Factor table) and it references the Product Terms document rather than the Product List and Product Use Rights documents.

Get this updated brief here in the Application Servers section: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.

Extra Rights for Project/Visio Pro for Office 365

There are some technical difficulties when installing Office 2016 acquired through a Volume Licensing program on the same device as Project/Visio Pro acquired through an Office 365 subscription – this site has a useful table showing the various incompatibilities that exist: http://bit.ly/1S7ywQ8.

However, new licensing rights introduced in the June 2016 Product Terms (see page 59) mean that Office 2016 users with a subscription for Project Pro for Office 365 or Visio Pro for Office 365 may install and use a single copy of Project Professional 2016 or Visio Professional 2016 software on the device on which Office 2016 is installed, thus solving the problem.

BYOL SQL VMs available in Azure Gallery

Microsoft announce a new set of Bring-Your-Own-Licence SQL + Windows virtual machine images in the Azure Gallery.

This means that you can use an image to easily provision a Windows VM with SQL Server, and then use existing Volume Licensing licences with Software Assurance to license the SQL part of the VM.

For more details and some useful pictures, see the Microsoft announcement here: http://bit.ly/1Uf54zu.

APS Licensing Datasheet

Analytics Platform System

 

There’s a new (June 2016) Analytics Platform System Pricing and Licensing datasheet. What’s that in normal English? Well, this is the Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) appliance for data warehouse workloads which runs (keep with me here) SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse edition. Bear in mind that when you acquire one of these appliances it’s pre-built, but you still need to purchase licences for the different components.

This datasheet does a good job of explaining the different servers and when Windows Server, System Center and SQL Enterprise licences are required.

Find it here: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.

Microsoft Hosting and CSP Newsletter

The May 2016 Hosting and Cloud Service Provider newsletter is out.

There are three topics of licensing interest: firstly, SQL Server 2016 is available through SPLA on 1 June 2016 with the removal of both the BI edition and the Core Factor table. Then there’s notice of a change to the SPUR release schedule – now it will only be refreshed where there are new use rights. Finally, there’s a reminder of a licensing webinar on 9 June with this link adding it to your calendar: http://bit.ly/24U9HAv.

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