Microsoft announce that hotpatching for Windows Server 2025 will be generally available as a subscription service on 1 July, 2025, costing $1.50 per CPU core per month. This new way of installing updates that doesn’t require a reboot after installation has been available for the Azure Edition of Windows Server Datacenter, but is now available to servers running outside of Azure, as long as they’re connected to Azure Arc.
Find the (excellent) announcement article here: https://bit.ly/4k0GGPJ.
There’s an updated (April 2025) Subscription License Suites document from Microsoft. This useful document shows you which individual licences make up suites like Office 365 E3. There are a couple of changes: the addition of Microsoft 365 Business Premium as an eligible prerequisite for Microsoft 365 E5 Security, and a note about mixed licensing scenarios for Microsoft Defender for Business and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2.
Find this updated document here: https://bit.ly/4d4L91C.
Microsoft announce that Dragon Copilot is available in the US from May 1, 2025 and will be available in Canada on June 1, 2025, with the exception of the province of Quebec. It’ll then come to the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Quebec in the months after that. It’s also added to the May 2025 Product Terms (https://bit.ly/3GCH48E) where we see there’s a Dragon Copilot User licence and a Dragon Copilot Flex User licence.
There’s a new licensing guidance document which explains all – the regular licence gives you access to all services as well as ambient and GenAI features, and the Flex licence gives you access to core features with the ambient and GenAI features billed on a consumption basis.
You can find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3Ez36IQ, and the licensing guidance document here: https://bit.ly/4cYNpqP.
Microsoft announce “Computer Use” – a capability that will enable Agents to interact with websites and desktop apps by clicking buttons, selecting menus, and typing into fields on the screen. It’s due to come to Copilot Studio soon through an early access research preview program.
You can find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/3GgperF with a link to apply to participate in the preview program, and why not register for a demo session at Build in May 2025: https://bit.ly/4jV3EYl.
1 May 2025 marks the end of sale for new customers of Azure AD External Identities Plan 2 and Azure AD B2C – Microsoft Entra External ID is Microsoft’s latest Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solution for managing identity, authentication and authorisation of external users.
This site gives information about required actions for existing customers of the older solutions (https://bit.ly/42E3i1d), and there’s a useful FAQ here: https://bit.ly/4jNr2Yl.
Microsoft announce that when Exchange Server SE and Skype for Business Server SE become available in July 2025 there will be some price increases. These two products, along with SharePoint Server SE will increase by 10%, and the Core CAL Suite and Enterprise CAL Suite will increase by 15% and 20% respectively.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3RwWtJU.
Windows Autopatch, a cloud service to automate updates, was originally available only to Windows 10/11Enterprise E3/E5 or VDA licensed customers. Microsoft announce that from April 2025 it’s also available to Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Microsoft 10/11 Education A3/A5 customers.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/42WQ0OI, and confirmation of the licensing requirements here: https://bit.ly/4lHweOw.
Microsoft announce that Hotpatching is now available for Windows 11 Enterprise. It’s designed to help protect organisations from cyberattacks, while minimising user disruptions since Hotpatch updates don’t require a PC to be restarted.
Find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/4jfQPrC, along with details on how the technology works and how to get started.
Microsoft announce Purview Data Security Investigations (DSI). This is a solution that enables organisations to rapidly identify and mitigate risks from sensitive data exposure. DSI will be in public preview in late April 2025 and administrators will need to activate Purview PAYG billing and provision Security Compute Units.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/42X9KSk.
Microsoft introduce new Pay-As-You-Go meters for Purview to help customers effectively secure and govern data as it moves into and through AI apps and agents. The meters are available from 1 May, 2025 and billed, as usual, through an Azure Subscription. If you don’t have an Azure Subscription linked to your tenant on 30 June, 2025, then these metered capabilities will stop working.
Find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/42U3HwH.