Category Archives: Uncategorized

SCE v EAP Price Changes – the Maths!

Those who know me may recall that I started life as a maths teacher, so a chance to dabble in a bit of algebra is always a treat. And for those of you who hate algebra and could never see a use for it – well, here it is – a way of working out the price changes in SCE (the new EA Server and Cloud Enrolment) and EAP (the old Enterprise Application Platform Enrolment).

We know that in the EAP, licences are split into either Standard or Enterprise flavours and customers get either 15% or 40% discount off the price of a new licence and no discount off the compulsory three year’s SA. So, for a SQL Standard licence costing “S” the price paid over 3 years is 0.85 x S + 3 x SA. Since SA is 25% of the licence price, it’s 0.85 x S + 3 x 0.25 x S = 1.6 x S. In other words, if you know the list price of a SQL Standard licence, the customer actually pays 1.6 times that through the lifetime of the EAP.

Good. Let’s do the same with a SQL Enterprise licence. Using a similar approach with “E” being an Enterprise licence, the price paid over 3 years is 0.6 x E + 3 x SA or 0.6 x E + 3 x 0.25 x E = 1.35 x E. So the customer pays 1.35 times the price of an Enterprise licence through the EAP.

And what about SCE? Well, there’s no differentiation between Standard and Enterprise licences (good) and there’s a 15% discount off the TOTAL L&SA price (interesting). Again taking a SQL Standard edition licence costing “S” we can work out that the customer pays 0.85 x S + 0.85 x 3 x SA or 0.85 x S + 0.85 x 3 x 0.25 x S which (finally) comes to 1.4875 x S. Luckily, since the calculations are the same for the Enterprise edition, we’re done!

And the conclusions? Well, for a SQL Standard licence, the customer pays 1.6 times the licence in an EAP and 1.4875 times the licence in SCE. Dividing 1.4875 by 1.6 gives 0.9296 which tells me that it’s a 7% decrease in price for the total L&SA price over the life of the SCE. For SQL Enterprise, it’s 1.4875 divided by 1.35 which gives 1.101 which represents a 10% increase. So, not huge changes in price for a customer.

So don’t you wish you’d paid attention in your maths lessons? 😉

Overview of the Changes to the September 2013 Volume Licensing Product List

This month we bid a fond farewell to a few products and, appropriately for this back-to-school time of year, say “oooh, aren’t you growing fast?” to others.

It’s goodbye to the following:

  • Office 365 Plans K2 and E2: as you’ve probably picked up, the features in these SKUs are now consolidated into the K1 and E1 offerings and that’s what customers should renew into
  • System Center Essentials 2010: Microsoft confirmed some time ago that this would be the last release of the product, and in March 2013 SA-only and L&SA SKUs were removed, with the final L-only SKUs going this month
  • TechNet subscriptions: the retirement of TechNet was announced by Microsoft in July 2013 and the three key SKUs for Volume Licensing customers are removed this month

As we’ve been expecting, there are now an increased number of Office 365 plans available through the Open and Open Value programs. Commercial customers can now buy the following SKUs through their agreements, with Government and Academic customers having access to an only very slightly different set:

  • Office 365 Plans E1 and E3
  • Office 365 ProPlus
  • Exchange Online Plan 1
  • Exchange Online Protection

And leaving to last the fastest growing set of services, namely Azure. Just as an aside, if you’d searched for “Azure” in the September 2012 Product List you’d have found 28 instances – a search in this month’s yields 112 – an impressive year-on-year growth!

This month sees the addition of the Windows Azure Active Directory Rights Management Services User Subscription Licence (and it’s no better abbreviated to a WAADRMS USL is it?!) This licenses (of course) access to the Azure Active Directory Rights Management Service.  There’s further, useful information in the July 2013 PUR where we’re told on pages 26/28 that this USL will also license users for on-premise Rights Management through Windows Server 2012. On a related note, there’s also confirmation on these pages and on page 86 that Office 365 E3 and E4 USLs include access to Rights Management both on-premise (Windows Server 2012 ADRMS) and in the cloud (Windows Azure ADRMS).

RDS 2012 R2 FAQ

Windows Server 2012 R2 RDS FAQ document from Microsoft. Three key takeaways: the licensing model remains the same (RDS 2012 CALs are allowed to access Windows Server 2012 R2, and RDS CALs are required in most virtual desktop scenarios), there will be a new SA benefit for RDS CALs (eventually – “by next year” – they will permit access to hosted Windows Server desktops without an RDS SAL), new prices are confirmed for the RDS CALs (word on the street is that there’s a 20% increase): http://bit.ly/18wY96Z.

July 2013 PUR updated for Exchange Online Protection

Exchange Online Protection provides cloud-based email protection for Microsoft Exchange Online cloud-hosted mailboxes or an on-premise Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 environment. But what USLs or CALs include rights to EOP? Page 74 of the July 2013 PUR confirms the complete list. More interestingly perhaps, it also confirms when EOP licences are NOT required: for shared, resource, and application-based mailboxes.

Azure AD RMS

An engagingly written (yes really!) whitepaper on Microsoft Rights Management including Azure RMS. I’d recommend reading the whole thing, but otherwise the licensing information starts on page 14. Three key takeaways: no licences are required for consuming rights protected content (only if you’re doing the protecting), Office 365 E3 and E4 already include Azure RMS (these suites are said to be “RMS-enlightened”), the Azure RMS subscription will be available as an add-on subscription both through MOSA and the EA (looks like September 2013). Get the whitepaper here: http://bit.ly/1cacWIJ.

System Center 2012 R2 Licensing Guide

New System Center 2012 R2 Licensing Guide from Microsoft. Three key takeaways: nothing has changed from System Center 2012 licensing (hurrah! but it IS good to have an up-to-date guide), you will need SA on your 2012 licences to move to 2012 R2 (as we’ve come to expect), Azure is called out for public cloud licensing (confirmation that each Azure instance is considered to be one virtual OSE): http://bit.ly/17GwiSB

Changes for SMB Customers Buying Office 365

Again, that very useful Office 365 Microsoft webcast has provided most of the information for this post. View it at http://bit.ly/15elDBr where the SMB-related information starts at 31:28. However, don’t rush off – I’ve summarised the main points here so feel free just to read on.

In summary, there are three key things happening for SMB customers who buy or have bought Office 365. These will be implemented between July and September 2013 so let’s see what’s happening month by month.

July 2013: Easy switching of Office 365 plans
July gave customers who have purchased their Office 365 licences through MOSA the opportunity to switch EASILY between plans. Customers have been able to switch plans in the past but it involved purchasing a new subscription and then cancelling the old one. Now there’s the “Switch plans wizard” which makes a number of upgrades simple to implement. Essentially, the wizard allows customers to switch plans in two key scenarios. Firstly, they can switch between plans in the same service family; for example customers currently subscribed to Office 365 Small Business can move to Office 365 Small Business Premium. Then, secondly, they can move from a standalone plan to an Enterprise plan; for example, from Exchange Online Plan 1 to Office 365 Plan E1. Outside of these scenarios (perhaps moving to a different service family) customers will need to switch manually (without using the wizard), although word has it that more switches will be added to the wizard as 2013 moves on.

I thought these resources were also useful:
Switch plans wizard announcement on Office 365 Technology blog at: http://bit.ly/14LI7Uv
Can I switch to a different Office 365 plan or subscription? FAQ page at: http://bit.ly/13vfRLH

August 2013: Dynamic PINs
August is all about the new Dynamic PIN functionality, and Office 365 M SKUs with this new functionality appeared on the August price lists for the Open, Open Value and Open Value Subscription programs. This new functionality helps customers who order multiple seats (you’d think that would be most customers!), and the example used in the webcast is a good one focussing as it does on a customer who wants to buy 87 seats for the M plan. Previously, the M SKUs within the Volume Licensing programs were associated with a certain number of seats which customers had to combine to end up with the required number. So, our customer wanting his 87 seats would have had to have purchased 1 x 50 seat SKU, 1 x 25 seat SKU, 2 x 5 seat SKUs and 2 x 1 seat SKUs. Now I like all things mathematical but even I can see this is a bit tedious for normal people. So the new and improved way of doing things is to purchase a single subscription which has a single key; that key is linked to the amount of seats ordered and will activate that precise number of seats. Lovely!

September 2013: More enterprise offerings in Open
And what can we look forward to in September? Well, this is the month that some of the most popular Office 365 offerings get added to the Open, Open Value and Open Value Subscription price lists. It won’t just be the M plan anymore, all of the following will be available too:

  • Office 365 ProPlus
  • Office 365 Plan E1
  • Office 365 Plan E3
  • Exchange Online Plan 1
  • Exchange Online Protection