The January 2015 PUR is re-issued: if you found you couldn’t click anywhere in the document then this is now fixed. http://bit.ly/MSpur.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
74-678 Exam Preparation Guide Available
Our brand new book which helps you to prepare for and pass the new Volume Licensing exam 74-678 is now available in Amazon Kindle stores around the world! It will teach you all the topics you need to know for the exam and gives you a chance to assess your progress with its hundreds of revision questions. Definitely worth a look if you’re working towards the 74-678 certification: http://bit.ly/74-678-UK-Kindle (UK) or http://bit.ly/74-678-US-Kindle (US). And if you’re waiting for the paperback version then that will be here soon!
Changes to services in the Office 365 Enterprise Plans
The services included in the Office 365 Enterprise Plans are always being refined and here are two to know about: from January 2015 new customers won’t have access to a SharePoint Online Public Website, although existing customers will continue to have access for another two years (http://bit.ly/1wvnKJX) and all Office 365 customers will have access to Office 365 Video by early 2015. What is Office 365 Video?
Essentially a new SharePoint portal type optimised for video so that organisations can post, share and discover video content. It’s powered by Azure Media Services and if you want to know more, it would be worth checking out the announcement here: http://bit.ly/1FschEy
.
Enterprise Cloud Suite FAQ
There’s a new (December 2014) Enterprise Cloud Suite FAQ document if you have access to the Partner Learning Center.
This link (http://bit.ly/1rZZovg) takes you to what appears to be recordings of the L100 to L300 training sessions but the FAQ document is there too. It’s 12 pages of licensing deliciousness and includes sections on Windows SA per User, Licensing for Enterprise Voice and Software Assurance in the context of the new Enterprise Cloud Suite.
MapPoint Discontinued from 31 December 2014
MapPoint, and its best friends AutoRoute and Streets and Trips, are discontinued from 31 December 2014. The Microsoft announcement gives details of mapping alternatives including, of course, Bing Maps, as well as Power Map for Excel, and there’s a link to the story behind AutoRoute too. Find it here: http://bit.ly/1vReRJt.
November 2014 Visual Studio and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper
There’s an updated (November 2014) Visual Studio and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper, so here’s a summary of those November changes and you can download the document here: http://bit.ly/1JQmpGU.
- There’s a section added for Visual Studio Community 2013 which is the new collection of the Visual Studio Express SKUs. It’s free to download and any individual developer can use it to create their own free or paid apps. Businesses are also allowed to use it with various restrictions in place for commercial activities, but all organisations are able to use it for a classroom learning environment, for academic research, or for contributing to open source projects. There are a couple of useful scenarios on page 10 to clarify the usage rights
- There are some changes to the licensing of the Release Management solution. Previously, each node or endpoint to which an application was deployed needed to be licensed with either Visual Studio Deployment 2013 Standard or Datacenter. However, from 1 January 2015, target servers receiving automated deployments from Release Management Server will no longer require a Visual Studio Deployment licence as per page 32
The last time we reviewed this document was July 2014 and there were further releases (it transpires) in August and October 2014, so the following changes may also be interesting to you:
- Visual Studio Online: there is clarification on page 6 showing how the different MSDN subscriptions correlate to the various Visual Studio Online plans, and confirmation that an unlimited number of stakeholders can join a Visual Studio Online account to carry out tasks such as entering and editing work items and submitting feedback. Details on purchasing Visual Studio Online via an Azure subscription are also confirmed on page 12
- The MSDN Cloud Use Rights are updated throughout to allow the running of MSDN software on Azure VMs only rather than also on VMs run on shared servers owned by third parties – previously known as Qualified MSDN Cloud Partners. See page 16 for example
- There are some enhancements to the rules around assigning MSDN subscriptions to external entities on page 22 and new text states that customers must track assignments for all external entities and could be asked to provide a “Declaration of MSDN Licenses” amendment that is signed both by the customer and its outsourced entity
- There is also clarification throughout that MSDN Subscriptions obtained as benefits of the Microsoft Partner Program can’t be used for direct revenue-generating activity and that organisations must purchase subscriptions – see page 22 for example
- And finally there is some relaxation of the rules for when a Team Foundation Server CAL is required: page 26 confirms that one is not required for entering, viewing or editing any work items (previously it was just ones you had created) and on page 32 the requirement for having a CAL for anyone triggering the release pipeline sequence is removed
Licence Reservation FAQs
Licence Reservation is a great way for EA customers to place mid-term orders for Online Services without a PO. If the prices are locked for the services, great, otherwise the QuickStart facility is there to order services before the price is locked.
This is a useful page on some of the most frequently asked questions on Licence Reservation and QuickStart: http://bit.ly/1xrQg1W.
Day 24 – 74-678 Top Tips
Our final tip for a successful 74-678 Christmas – it’s been fun! Continue your exam preparation with all of our resources here: http://bit.ly/74-678 and sign up to keep informed as we release further tools and information to help you towards exam success. Merry Christmas!
Upcoming Changes to Visual Studio Licensing
There are a number of changes coming to Visual Studio licensing – most from 1 Jan 2015 – and this excellent Microsoft blog takes you through the detail in a delightfully readable way: http://bit.ly/13vrp29.
If that still hasn’t tempted you then here’s the overview: there’s a reduction in licences required for release management, test execution rights are added to Visual Studio Online Basic and the Team Foundation Server CAL, prices are reduced for cloud load testing and the VS Online build service, spending caps can be applied for load testing and build, and the ten user limit is removed for Visual Studio Online Professional. It’s all go in the Visual Studio world!
Day 23 – 74-678 Top Tips
Tip 23 for a successful 74-678 Christmas. There are some new question types in the exam – our Sample Exam, and Exam Preparation Guide (ready in January!) give you some examples of these question types so that there are no surprises in the exam.