Author Archives: Louise Ulrick

Licensing hosted RPA scenarios

Power Automate now supports two hosted RPA scenarios to enable organisations to set up and scale automation. As a reminder, RPA desktop flows can be run either with human interaction (known as “attended”) or without (“unattended”). The new options offer a hosted machine for attended or unattended RPA aimed at users who want to build, test or run automation. Alternatively, there’s a hosted machine group option for unattended RPA which offers automatic scaling and dynamic load balancing. From a licensing perspective, you need to acquire a Hosted RPA Add-on licence for as many bots as you want to run concurrently, and this licence has a prerequisite of either the Power Automate Per User with Attended RPA licence or a Per Flow licence, and costs $215 per bot per month.

You can find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/3JbWoZ4, pricing here: http://bit.ly/3ooVJb2, and the Learn documentation here: http://bit.ly/3DfJN3f.

Microsoft Cost Management summary for 2022

The Microsoft Cost Management tools help you to manage your Microsoft cloud costs across Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure. There’s an excellent article giving an overview of the improvements that were made to the tools in 2022, as well as the new ways to save money that were introduced.

You can find the article here: http://bit.ly/3Wltkkw, with its many links to lots of useful resources.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (January 2023) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide. There are a couple of minor clarifications (see the Change Log on page 62), and the addition of Managed Environments throughout. Managed Environments were generally available in October 2022 (http://bit.ly/3WwzXRr) and enable IT administrators greater visibility and more control of apps and flows in an environment. Of licensing-worthy note is that when Managed Environments is activated in a specific environment, all Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, and Power Pages usage in that environment requires standalone licenses.

You can find out more about Managed Environments here: http://bit.ly/3iQ9QqA and grab the updated Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/3WQvMRn.

Microsoft 365 Basic

Microsoft announce that the OneDrive Standalone plan will become Microsoft 365 Basic on 30 January, 2023 and will include the same 100GB of cloud storage as well as ad-free and secure email with Outlook. Existing customers will automatically be transitioned at the end of January and advanced security features will also be added later in 2023.

Find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/3H9Z4nx.

Windows 8.1 End of Support

Microsoft remind us that Windows 8.1 reached End of Support on 10 January, 2023 at which point software updates are no longer provided. It’s also worth noting that Microsoft will not be offering Extended Security Updates for Windows 8.1.

Find a useful article with a whole host of FAQs and links to further information here: https://bit.ly/3GvzpFn.

Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance Licensing Guide

There’s a new (September 2022) Microsoft Licensing Guide for Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance. It gives you an overview of the service tiers, and explains how to license containers, how the billing under different connectivity modes works, how to use the Azure Hybrid Benefit, and the licensing for non-production use.

Find this guide here: http://bit.ly/3u7z2es.

Introduction to Microsoft Core licensing models

There’s an updated (October 2022) “Introduction to Microsoft Core licensing models” Licensing Brief from Microsoft. The main changes are for the new Windows Server per virtual machine licensing option, as well as the change for SQL Server and BizTalk Server where licensing by virtual machine is now a Software Assurance benefit.

Find this updated Licensing Brief here: https://bit.ly/3SWTn0u.

Teams Shared Device licence

Microsoft announce that the existing Common Area Phone licence will be rebranded to the Teams Shared Device licence to enable more scenarios involving shared devices. This licence will still be used for Teams Phones deployed in shared areas, but will also be used to support a hotdesking experience on a Teams Display, and for a standalone Teams Panel not tied to a Microsoft Teams Room.

Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/3TZLk2I.

Windows 11 licensing for Virtual Desktops

There’s an updated (November 2022) “Windows 11 licensing for Virtual Desktops” Licensing Brief from Microsoft with two main changes.

Firstly, there’s the inclusion of the Flexible Virtualization Benefit showing the additional options customers can now have for using Windows 11 virtual machines with an Authorized Outsourcer’s shared hardware.

Secondly, the Qualifying Operating System requirements are updated, removing the need for one when a user is licensed with a Microsoft 365 licence. Find this updated guide here: http://bit.ly/3gpVmg7.