Category Archives: Uncategorized

Security and compliance Add-ons for Microsoft 365 Business Premium

Microsoft announce a range of security and compliance Add-ons for Microsoft 365 Business Premium. From a security perspective, there’s the Microsoft Defender Suite for Business Premium, costing $10 per user per month, and for compliance there’s the Microsoft Purview Suite for Business Premium, also costing $10 per user per month. Alternatively, the Microsoft Defender and Purview Suites for Business Premium are a cost effective way of purchasing everything at $15 per user per month.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3JUp635, with details of what components are in which suite.

Changes to Copilot licensing

Microsoft announce a number of changes to Copilot licensing.

Firstly, there’s more usage of AI tools included in a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, and consumption is now measured in Copilot Credits, rather than messages.

Secondly, there’s a spot of renaming for the Copilot Studio experiences: Agent Builder, when you’re using Copilot Studio as a Microsoft 365 Copilot user, is now called Copilot Studio Lite, with the full experience being (helpfully) called Copilot Studio Full.

And there are changes to the Role Based Copilots too – from 10 October, 2025 if you’ve got a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence you won’t need to pay extra for Copilot for Sales, Copilot for Service, or Copilot for Finance (aka Finance Agents) – they’ll just be available to install from the Agent Store.

Grab the datasheet with this information here: https://bit.ly/46597I7.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (August 2025) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide with just some minor changes. The documented ones are some enhancements to the Team Members Use Rights table on page 53, but the undocumented ones are slightly more bizarre… On pages 13 and 14 some tables have been reformatted to (presumably) make them easier for AI to read. However, the formatting’s gone awry and numerical ranges are now all dates: 1-8 becomes 8-Jan for example.

Odd edits aside, it’s a useful guide and you can grab it here: https://bit.ly/4fhZkRM.

SSRS and Power BI Report Server

Microsoft announce that there won’t be a new version of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) for SQL Server 2025 and that Power BI Report Server will become the default reporting solution. Power BI Report Server has long been available for customers with SQL Server Enterprise Core licences with SA but with the launch of SQL Server 2025 the eligibility rules change. Any customer with a licence for a paid-for edition of SQL Server 2025 (with or without SA) will be able to use their SQL Server keys to install both SQL Server 2025 and Power BI Report Server. For customers who want to continue using SSRS 2022, that product remains supported until 11 January, 2033.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/45cID6T, and a useful FAQ here: https://bit.ly/4lWjVx2.

Power Platform Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (July 2025) Power Platform Licensing Guide. There aren’t major changes – a table added on page 3 of the document gives a summary of purchasing options, and a few errors are corrected in the Power Automate summary table on page 16.

Keep your Licensing Guide collection up to date and help yourself to this July 2025 guide here: https://bit.ly/4knUaEY.

Azure AI Foundry Pricing Guide

There’s a new (June 2025) Azure AI Foundry Pricing Guide from Microsoft. Azure AI Foundry is a platform for developers and IT administrators to build and manage AI applications and agents and there are a LOT of moving parts. This 20-page guide does a useful job of explaining the different licensing models going through, for example, Pay-As-You-Go options, Provisioned Throughput Units (PTUs) and Azure AI Foundry Reservations.

Find this guide here: https://bit.ly/4lYpQlq.

Security Copilot capacity calculator

Microsoft announce the availability of the Security Copilot capacity calculator to help organisations estimate their SCU capacity needs.

You can find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3Izx4hr, and try out the calculator here: https://bit.ly/3IuSts6.

Microsoft Purview licensing guidance document

There’s a new (May 2025) Microsoft Purview licensing guidance document from Microsoft. It is, however, a trifle disappointing being as it is a bit light on detail and only focussing on the user licensing options. There is a potentially useful table on pages 4/5 showing the components of the Compliance mini suites, but there are a couple of errors in it. Find this new guide here: https://bit.ly/4nYV2CJ and, if you’re a subscriber, come to this week’s training and let’s talk about the errors and where you can find them documented in LicenseVerse.

Not a subscriber? Email info@licensingschool.co.uk.

Hotpatching for Windows Server 2025 GA

Microsoft announce that hotpatching for Windows Server 2025 is generally available as a subscription service from 16 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 announcement article here: https://bit.ly/44B2vQY.

ESUs for Exchange Server and Skype for Business Server

Microsoft announce that there WILL be a limited Extended Security Updates program for Exchange 2016/2019 and Skype for Business Server 2015/2019, all of which come to end of support on 14 October, 2025. It will be a mini program – lasting just 6 months – and customers are told to reach out to their Microsoft account teams after 1 August, 2025 for details on the per server cost and how to purchase and receive the ESUs.

Find the Exchange Server announcement here: https://bit.ly/3Ue9Y2b, and the one for Skype for Business Server here: https://bit.ly/4lXCgdg.