Author Archives: Louise Ulrick

Home Use Program: Office 2019

The Home Use Program is available to those customers who have active Software Assurance on their Office suite or applications licences, and it enables users of licensed devices to buy Office products at a heavily discounted price for home use. Office 2019 is now available through this program with a choice of Office Professional Plus 2019, Office Home and Business 2019, Visio Professional 2019 and Project Professional 2019.

They are all priced at $14.99, an increase from $9.99, and you can find out about the HUP program and order the products here: http://bit.ly/2Dd65VN.

Update on CSP Offerings

Microsoft update their page on Reservations and Server Subscriptions in CSP to reveal that there will be two new offerings available in the short term: Reservations for SQL Managed Instance, and Server Subscriptions for RDS CALs.

Find the page and its host of useful resources here: http://bit.ly/2NIC5n1.

Azure Reservations

Azure Reservations are a way of pre-paying for an Azure resource over a one or three-year term to get the most cost-effective pricing. The Reservations family continues to grow: it started with Reserved Instances, a way of pre-paying for Azure virtual machine base compute, and was extended with Reserved Capacity, a way of pre-paying for Azure SQL Database compute capacity. Today the family also includes Software Reservations for SUSE Linux software, and Reserved Capacity for Azure Cosmos DB throughput.

This page (http://bit.ly/2Q3vm7J) gives you an overview of Reservations and if you expand the “Buy a reservation” link at the left you can get details on the current four members of the Reservations family.

SharePoint Server 2019 Licensing

The SharePoint Server licensing page is updated for the 2019 version. And there’s good news – no changes to the licensing from the 2016 version.

Find the licensing page here for reference: http://bit.ly/2CGxy16.

Availability of Office 2019 Servers

Microsoft announce the release of Exchange Server 2019, Skype for Business Server 2019, SharePoint Server 2019, and Project Server 2019.

Find the announcement with links to more information on the new features of each product here: http://bit.ly/2Pqv4L3.

Dynamics 365 Update Policies

The update schedule for all of the Dynamics 365 products will soon be on a twice-yearly schedule with updates in April and October. Customers using Customer Engagement applications must have updated to the latest version of the apps by 31 January 2019, and Finance and Operations customers by 31 March, 2019. After that date, only the latest version of the online services will be supported. There’s no action for Business Central and the Talent app customers as these products are already on this update schedule.

Find an overview FAQ for Dynamics 365 Update Policies here (http://bit.ly/2yovuYF) with links to further information if required.

Retirement of System Center Global Service Monitor

Microsoft announce the retirement of System Center Global Service Monitor. Currently an SA benefit for System Center customers, this service will retire on 7 November, 2018 and customers are recommended to move to web application monitoring capabilities powered by Azure Application Insights. Current GSM customers will be notified of the retirement, and may migrate tests and alert rules to Azure Application Insights at no cost.

Find the announcement and some FAQs here: http://bit.ly/2JeRh9u.

Microsoft Learn

Microsoft announce that the E-Learning Software Assurance benefit is being replaced with Microsoft Learn, a completely free service for any customer to learn Microsoft products and services. Beginning 1st November 2018, current content and portals available to Software Assurance E-Learning customers will be retired, and access to current courses, transcripts, completion certificates and administrative tools residing on those sites will be unavailable.

Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/2OTERcb, with links to currently available courses and an FAQ.

Skype for Business Online and Microsoft Teams

Skype for Business Online features and functionality are moving into Microsoft Teams. From a licensing perspective, additional services such as Audio Conferencing and Phone System will continue to be Add-on licences, and from a technical perspective from 1st October, 2018 new Office 365 customers with less than 500 seats will be onboarded to Microsoft  Teams and will have no access to Skype for Business Online.

This is a useful FAQ with lots of information on the whole Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams upgrade topic: http://bit.ly/2pL5Rwz.

Dynamics 365 Business Central On-Premises Solution

Dynamics 365 Business Central, the all-in-one ERP business management solution aimed at small and medium businesses, was released as a cloud solution in April 2018. Now (October 2018) it’s available as an on-premises solution, replacing the Dynamics NAV product. It’s only available through the Dynamics Price List (DPL) and the licensing is explained in a Licensing Guide which you can find on the PartnerSource portal here: http://bit.ly/2RxQrIv.

Customers who license the on-premises solution may move to the cloud solution by purchasing Business Central Cloud Add-on licences. Premium and Team Member Add-ons are available and one or the other must be acquired for all Business Central On-Premises users. Find details on page 90 of the October 2018 Product Terms document.

In addition, existing Business Central cloud users licensed with active User Subscription Licences may install the Business Central On-Premises server software and access it under their current licences. Find details on page 21 of the October 2018 Online Services Terms document.

The Product Terms and Online Services Terms documents are updated monthly and you can find the current and archived versions here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.