Category Archives: Uncategorized

General Availability of Power Pages

Microsoft announce the General Availability of Power Pages at the Ignite conference on 12 October, 2022. Power Pages is the fifth product in the Power Platform family and, in common with the other members of the Power Platform family, is a low-code solution which enables any user to create a secure website, but with advanced capabilities for customisation by professional developers as required.

From a licensing perspective, you license a website for authenticated users and/or anonymous users, either on a subscription basis or on a pay-as-you-go basis. There is tiered pricing available for the subscription licences which starts at $200 for 100 authenticated users per site per month and $75 for 500 anonymous users per site per month, and which will be available to purchase from 1 November, 2022. The PAYG meters accrue charges against an Azure Subscription and cost $4 per authenticated user per site per month and $0.30 per anonymous user per site per month.

You can find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3TjBMja, pricing information here: https://bit.ly/3MBzV7a, and a whole host of useful licensing information here: https://bit.ly/3eyEcvH.

Dynamics 365 Business Central On-premises Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (September 2022) Dynamics 365 Business Central On-premises Licensing Guide. There aren’t major changes – just refinements in language and other minor amendments. As usual, there’s detail in the Change Log on page 17.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3Dnfg4e.

Flexible Virtualization Benefit Licensing Guide

There’s a brand new (October 2022) Licensing Guide for the new Flexible Virtualization Benefit. This allows customers licensed with Software Assurance or Software Subscriptions to use their licences with Authorized Outsourcers’ shared servers. The guide contains an overview of the benefit itself, a definition of Authorized Outsourcers, and details about using the benefit with SQL Server, Windows Server, and the desktop products. There are also FAQ and Resources sections at the end.

Find this new guide here: https://bit.ly/3T1kDe5.

Flexible Virtualization benefit and Windows Server VM licensing

Microsoft announce that there will be two significant licensing changes coming in October 2022.

Firstly, the outsourcing terms will be expanded via the Flexible Virtualization benefit which will allow customers to use their eligible licences with any Authorized Outsourcer’s shared hardware. Eligible licences are licences purchased through a Volume Licensing agreement with active Software Assurance, or Server Subscriptions purchased through CSP, and Authorized Outsourcers are any partners offering hosted solutions – apart from the Listed Providers (Alibaba, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft).

The second change is an additional licensing option for Windows Server for customers with active SA or Server Subscriptions: rather than being restricted to licensing the whole physical server, these customers will be able to choose to license at the virtual machine level – both in their own data centres or with an Authorized Outsourcer.

For more information, see the partner announcement here: https://bit.ly/3wFgQdw, or the customer announcement here: https://bit.ly/3CF8eaT.

Retirement of Kaizala

Microsoft announce that Kaizala will retire on 31 August, 2023. Unsurprisingly, the recommendation is for customers to move to Teams and all Kaizala Pro capabilities are already in Teams.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3RaB9YU, with useful links for customers who need to make the Kaizala to Teams transition.

Exchange Server roadmap update

Microsoft confirm that the next version of Exchange Server will be licensed Server/CAL and will only be available to customers with active SA, similar to the current SharePoint Server and Project Server Subscription Editions. They also confirm that the release date of this new version has been moved out to the second half of 2025.

Find the announcement with lots of useful links here: https://bit.ly/3dSDR6n.

General Availability of Viva Goals

Microsoft announce that Viva Goals is now generally available. This Viva module is based on the acquired Ally.io product, and enables business goal setting and management via the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) goal-setting framework. From a licensing perspective, there’s a standalone Viva Goals license available for $6 per user per month, or it’s included in the existing Viva Suite license, currently costing $9 per user per month. Viva Goals is available as a Teams app where users must be licensed for Microsoft Teams, or a web app where there are no prerequisites.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3pbIMle, where there’s a good overview video, and the product/pricing page here: https://bit.ly/3bKcXwK.

Viva Sales in preview

Microsoft announce that Viva Sales is in preview. Viva as a brand is about improving the employee experience, and the Viva Suite is aimed at employees in any role across a business. Viva Sales is tailored to improve the employee experience for a specific role – sellers – and enables users to use Office 365 and Teams to automatically capture, access and register data into a CRM system, eliminating the administrative burden of manual data entry. In the public preview, Viva Sales will be available at no additional charge to organisations who use Microsoft 365 and Teams, and you’ll need to be licensed for Dynamics 365 to try out the full experience. Further details on licensing will be released when Viva Sales is generally available.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3bPH0TR, and a useful FAQ here: https://bit.ly/3vRZPwz.

Preview of PAYG option for Power Automate

Microsoft announce that the preview for the PAYG option for Power Automate is now available.

This means that rather than paying $15 per user every month (regardless of whether they run any flows) or $100 per flow every month (regardless of whether the flow is run), customers can choose to simply incur charges of $0.60 each time a cloud flow or attended desktop flow is run, or $3 when an unattended desktop flow is run.

As with many of the other new PAYG options, these flow consumption charges are associated with a nominated Azure Subscription.

You can find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3czvxry, a useful set of docs articles here: https://bit.ly/3SCC6u8, and the pricing page here: https://bit.ly/3ooVJb2.