Microsoft announce that Azure Active Directory will be renamed to Microsoft Entra ID from 1 October, 2023. There are no changes to any functionality or costs, and there’s no action for customers.
You can find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3Ddt9km, and this page has further useful information including some FAQs: https://bit.ly/43EgdPr.
Teams Rooms devices must be licensed with device licences rather than user licences from 1 July, 2023 (see our blog: https://bit.ly/3rdKRkS). However, there’s now a grace period delaying technical enforcement until 30 September, 2023 to give customers more time to get compliant.
Find details of this and other useful information in an FAQ here: https://bit.ly/43ft7mu.
There’s an updated (July 2023) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide with just some minor formatting changes. Get this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/44uwk2B.
Reservations are a great way of saving money in Azure if you can commit to a 1-year or 3-year term for services such as virtual machine compute. However, savings are only made if the Reservations are used, stopping Pay-As-You-Go charges. Administrators have historically been able to view utilisation rates in the Azure Management Portal, but there’s now a new alert feature which sends an email whenever a Reservation exhibits low utilisation.
See the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/3qZSxah, and find information on how to set these alerts up here: https://bit.ly/44ocFRN.
Customers buying their Azure services through an Enterprise Agreement or via the MCA-E have long been eligible for a free 12-month Azure Standard Support plan, and Microsoft confirm that this offer will be extended from 1 July, 2023 to 31 December, 2023.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3JA2cuD, terms of the offer here: https://bit.ly/3CTFrhq, and a useful comparison of all the Azure Support plans here: https://bit.ly/44i3x1h.
There’s a Power BI dashboard available for customers who want to see the savings they’ve made in Azure by purchasing Reservations or Savings Plans. Find out more and download the Power BI file with setup instructions here: https://bit.ly/3Il5r8R.
Azure Advisor can help with recommendations on how you can save money in Azure, and one thing it does is to look back at virtual machine usage to see if it can identify idle or underutilized virtual machines. The default lookback period is seven days, but now customers can adjust the lookback period to 14, 21, 30, 60, or 90 days if it’s more relevant for their business. Find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/3pULS0s.
There’s an updated (May 2023) Power Platform Licensing Guide which adds tiered pricing for the AI Builder credit packs. The packs include 1,000,000 AI Builder credits per month and if you buy under 10 packs they are $500 each, if you buy 10-49 packs they are $375 each, and for 50 or more packs, they are $250 each.
Find the details on page 20, and get the updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3LrdNMJ.
Following on from the introduction of the facility for users to request a Power Apps licence when they need it (see our blog: https://bit.ly/43cMw87) is the new facility for makers of the app to request a licence for users as they share the app.
Makers are warned when their app has premium components that will require a Power Apps licence and the process for the IT administrators is exactly the same as when a user requests a licence.
Find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/3o1YdQh.
There’s an updated-for-Windows 11 (April 2023) Desktop Operating Systems Licensing Guide. It’s a useful document covering the different Windows editions, device and user licensing options, as well as downgrade rights and Volume Licensing Activation.
Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3B8xvZb.