There’s an updated (November 2020) Qualified Devices and Qualified Users Licensing Brief.
This is a useful document if you work with the Enterprise Agreement and need guidance on what type of devices/users need to be counted as Qualified Devices and Qualified Users.
There are exclusions noted as well as hints on determining which devices are not managed, and also a couple of FAQs at the end of the document.
Find this updated document here: https://bit.ly/3miwUdu.
There’s an updated (November 2020) Microsoft 365 E3 – Unattended Licensing Brief.
This document helps you to understand how the Microsoft 365 E3 – Unattended licence allows a bot to run repetitive tasks in a Windows client/Office app without user intervention. The document has a useful FAQ section at the end and this new version adds a few additional questions clarifying the requirement for the licence in situations where there is already a Windows licence and for scenarios where third party providers are implementing unattended scenarios.
Find this updated document here: https://bit.ly/37mfx7n.
There’s an updated (December 2020) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide.
The main changes are the renaming of the Common Data Service to Dataverse, and the addition of 2,000 Customer Voice responses to the entitlements for Customer Insights.
Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3lu8InS.
There’s promotional pricing available for Power Apps from 1 December, 2020 to 30 June, 2021.
Customers can acquire Power Apps per App licences for $3 per user per month with a minimum purchase of 200 licences through an EA or through CSP, and Power Apps per User licences for $12 per user per month with a minimum purchase of 5,000 licences through an EA only.
See page 110 of the December 2020 Product Terms document and a footnote on the Power Apps pricing page here: http://bit.ly/2fKdhOl.
There’s an updated (November 2020) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide. There aren’t major changes and you can find a complete list of all the minor updates in the Change Log on page 57.
Find this guide here: https://bit.ly/3oVISfG.
From November 1, 2020 customers who have purchased Microsoft 365 A3/A5 or Windows 10 Enterprise A3/A5 through CSP can upgrade from Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Education, and page 42 of the November 2020 Product Terms is updated with this change.
Partners will need to submit a support request to get a Windows 10 Pro Education key which is installed by the customer and then, when the device joins the tenant domain, it is automatically upgraded to Windows 10 Education.
Get a step-by-step guide to the process and an FAQ here: https://bit.ly/36nkkUp, and a useful overview of the Windows 10 editions for education customers here: https://bit.ly/3lfBqJQ.
There’s an updated (November 2020) Power Apps Licensing Guide. The main updates are for the renaming of the Common Data Service to Dataverse, and the general availability of Dataverse for Teams.
Find the updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3nS7OTZ, and more information on Dataverse on our blog: https://bit.ly/370lSUD.
Microsoft announce the availability of some new constrained vCPU capable virtual machines. In this type of VM the vCPU count can be constrained to a half or a quarter of the original VM size allowing customers to reduce the cost of software licensing.
For instance, in the E8-4as v4 virtual machine there are 4 active vCPUs and 8 underlying vCPUs, and licensing for SQL Server is constrained to the active vCPU count, with only the operating system cost based on the underlying vCPUs.
Find the announcement regarding the most recent additions to the family here: https://bit.ly/3kUnbsX, and see all the VMs of this type, and their pricing, by searching for “constrained” on this page: https://bit.ly/3fofzxL.
There’s an updated (September 2020) Azure Stack Hub Licensing Guide. This is aimed at anyone who wants to get a basic understanding of how to license both the infrastructure and the workloads that run on Microsoft Azure Stack Hub.
Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3lPeH7P.
Microsoft announce that the Azure Hybrid Benefit for Linux is now generally available after a preview phase. This means that customers can bring their own Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscriptions to a virtual machine in Azure and just pay for the infrastructure charges. Customers can apply this Azure Hybrid Benefit to either existing or new virtual machines.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3pRFwe0, and details on exactly how the Azure Hybrid Benefit applies to Linux virtual machines here: https://bit.ly/2Tqh4S5.