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March 2016 MPSA Licensing Manual

The major changes to this very useful document are the inclusion of the alternative ordering terms for both licences with Software Assurance and Online Services. How do these work? I’ve explained them below, but you can find the information on page 6 of the Manual if you’re interested in the official wording.

First of all, Software Assurance. We’re used to SA purchases aligning to the third Purchasing Account Anniversary and this has the benefit that all of your SA purchases in a single year will be due for renewal at the same time – which is nice and easy to manage of course. The alternative option now is to purchase a full 36 months of SA – which over time could potentially mean that you’ve got SA renewal payments to make every month. However, it’s an option if customers want it, and for both alternatives they can pay in full upfront, or upfront annually on the Purchasing Account Anniversary or the Order Anniversary.

And then there’s Online Services. In the beginning, these subscriptions were always aligned to the first Purchasing Account Anniversary and then renewals were for a full 12 months. Now this remains one option but you can also purchase a full 12 months at any time. If you buy more subscriptions for the same service within a Purchasing Account then it will align to the original order of the service.

But that’s not all because last year some of the Online Services were made available to be purchased for two or three years and these were always aligned to the second or third Purchasing Account Anniversaries. Again, this is still an option but you can also choose to purchase full 24 or 36 month subscriptions if that’s better for you. And the payment options? Well, it’s the same as the SA options – you can pay for the whole period upfront, or upfront annually on the Purchasing Account Anniversary or the Order Anniversary.

And that’s still not all! The other change to Online Services, which is documented in the Manual, is the introduction of short-term subscriptions. This is where you can buy anything from 1 to 11 months of a service with no alignment to a Purchasing Account Anniversary. With this option, subsequent orders of the same service DON’T have to align to the first order.

The other changes that the Manual contains are small in comparison: some customers will now be using the Microsoft Business Center (MBC) as their management portal rather than the Microsoft Volume Licensing Center (MVLC) and you’ll see that change on page 4. There are notes throughout that certain SA benefits (Planning Services, Training Vouchers, Problem Resolution Support, and Enhanced Hotfix Support) are not available for Academic Purchasing Accounts, and the final change is that the Office Multi-Language Pack is removed as an SA benefit since the rights to it are now included with the licence.

You can find this Manual in the Program Licensing Guides section in our Microsoft Licensing Guides emporium here: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides.

Adxstudio, from Microsoft, Licensing Guide

Microsoft acquired Adxstudio towards the end of 2015 since the Adxstudio Portals are built natively on Dynamics CRM and make it easy for customers to extend CRM to the web (original announcement: http://bit.ly/1LZLxtC).

There’s now an Adxstudio, from Microsoft, Licensing Guide which shows the options both on-premises and hosted CRM customers have for licensing Adxstudio Portals. The bottom line – it’s not yet available through Microsoft Volume Licensing agreements.

For the full story, find the guide in our Dynamics Licensing Guides section: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides.

Free SQL Server licences for migrating Oracle customers

Microsoft offer free licences for customers who want to move their Oracle databases to SQL Server.

The process? Organizations identify how many SQL Server Core licences they’ll need for the migration, sign a Server and Cloud Enrolment, pay Software Assurance only for the Core licences, and then prove that the migration has taken place.

Included in the offer there’s also free training and deployment assistance until 30 June, 2016.

See the full announcement and download the offer brochure here: http://bit.ly/1YOolWM.

MPSA: short-term subscriptions

Microsoft announce the availability of short-term subscriptions in the MPSA from March 2016.

This new option is available for selected Online Services (E1 and EMS among them) and allows customers to subscribe for one to eleven months.

This means that they don’t have to commit to a minimum of 12 months or even align to their Purchasing Account Anniversaries, making it a good choice for short-term projects or to cover seasonal variations.

Read the full Microsoft blog post here where there’s also a complete list of the eligible Online Services: http://bit.ly/1Uq7bOt.

Multi-Tenant Office 365 ProPlus

So, if customers have, say, Office 365 E3 licences acquired through an Enterprise Agreement, can Office 365 ProPlus be hosted on their Services Provider’s shared hardware and delivered to the customer through RDS? Mais oui!

This was a change that happened in January 2016 and as long as the Services Provider meets certain conditions required by Microsoft, all is well.

You can read all about this here: http://bit.ly/21BIYqW, or, if you’re a partner wanting to get involved, here’s a webcast to listen to: http://bit.ly/1QndX2M.

Getting Started with Azure in CSP

If you’re a Cloud Solution Provider partner selling Azure then this Getting Started guide from Microsoft is worth a look.

There’s useful information on the Azure admin portals, the relationship between tenants, subscriptions and services, and how to use the various parts of the Partner Center.

You’ll also find links to useful resources and how to get help from Microsoft.

Get the guide here: http://bit.ly/1KUBdbF.

Microsoft Hosting and CSP Newsletter

The February 2016 Hosting and Cloud Service Provider newsletter is out.

It’s got articles on the new Azure Hybrid Use Benefit and the changes to the Shared Computer Activation rights allowing Office 365 ProPlus to be deployed in third-party multi-tenant environments. There are also links for partners to useful Azure in CSP resources.

Sign up for this free newsletter here: http://bit.ly/1iVEvxV.

February 2016 Self-Hosted Applications Volume Licensing Brief

There’s a new (February 2016) Self-Hosted Applications Volume Licensing Brief.

The major change is that Unified Solutions may now be deployed on shared hardware and there’s a section added explaining the various possible scenarios on pages 3-4.

This also leads, of course, to a need for clarification on how Windows Server must now be licensed for a Unified Solution, and there’s reference throughout the document to the options: through your own or a Service Provider’s SPLA, through Azure, or making use of the Azure Hybrid Use Benefit.

Get the Brief here: http://bit.ly/1OF8zpt.

Windows Server Essential Licensing Questions – and their Answers

Our first Essential Licensing Questions book is just being updated for references in the March 2016 Product Terms document and then it will be off to the printers for its second print run. The first? That was exclusively for our worldwide team of reviewers – thank you everyone! – who put the book through its paces to check that it does what we want it to.

And we were jolly pleased with their feedback! The average rating was a fab 4.7 out of 5 stars with comments from our reviewers like “The perfect reference guide for anyone having to navigate Microsoft’s Windows Server licensing! All the questions you’ll ever ask (and some you haven’t thought of yet!) in an easy to use book.” and “This book is nothing less than amazing! It is incredibly thorough and detailed. I wish I had one of these to reference for all MS products!”

People did like the format of the book: “Even with a very short time of using the book it feels easy to navigate and find the answers I was looking for.” However, there were some good ideas to make navigation even better, so we’ve incorporated those and you’ll find, for example, that the updated book has additional headings throughout.

Every answer that we give in the book is supported by a Microsoft reference and this was appreciated by our reviewers: “An easy to use no nonsense book about Windows Server volume licensing including Microsoft references. Exactly what we need.” Then we asked people if they would personally find the book useful in their day to day work – an overwhelming 96% agreed they would use it, with comments such as “This is a very handy tool for day to day licensing questions.” and “In my line of work I get a lot of difficult licensing questions, this book helps me big time in my everyday work.”

Overall, we’re pleased to say that our review team were very happy to recommend the book:
• “A must have for all IT Departments, Licensing Specialist and SAM Consultants.”
• “This Manual is excellent and a must for the Licensing Community (LSP) and the Employees in charge of SAM in their organization (Customer).”
• “I would recommend this book to any licensing specialist and would love for a similar book to be brought out for other products.”

There are a couple of special offers if you want to get your own copy of the book. Launch price will be £14.99 ($22.99) in March but the pre-order price available until the end of Friday 4th March 2016 is just £9.99 + P&P. The other offer is Book Assurance. What’s that? Well, we took the decision not to include any Windows Server 2016 information until the product is released – sometime in the summer probably. That’s when we’ll update our book with all the relevant licensing information, and if you want to receive the updated copy at that time then you just need to order Book Assurance for £5 today. All the offers are available worldwide here: http://bit.ly/LSBooksPreOrder.

And the final word goes to a smitten fan: “I’m in love with black books.” We hope you enjoy using the book too!

Azure HUB FAQ

Microsoft release more information on the Azure Hybrid Use Benefit – here are the highlights from the FAQ:

  • Windows Server with SA licences can be used to license Azure Virtual Machines at the base compute rate which is equal to the Linux rate for VMs
  • Each Windows Server licence covers 2 VMs with up to 8 cores, or one VM with up to 16 cores
  • To use the Azure HUB you need to create a Windows VM through PowerShell and set a special property which bills the VM at the base compute rate
  • Gallery images can’t be used with Azure HUB.

Find the full FAQ here: http://bit.ly/1jeqDj6.