There’s an updated (July 2020) Power Apps Licensing Guide.
There are just minor adjustments, such as updating for the name changes of some of the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 plans.
Find the updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3hJhDjJ and check out the Change Log on page 24 for the full list of changes.
Microsoft extend the Reservations family again with the availability of Reserved Capacity for the compute power of Hyperscale (Citus) server groups.
As you may expect there are one and three-year Reserved Capacity options available with savings of up to 45% and 65% respectively.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/300NwOZ, and find out more about this new Reserved Capacity option here: https://bit.ly/3jJLydq.
It’s Microsoft’s intention to take the content from the Product Terms and Online Services Terms documents and combine them into a single online resource.
If you want a sneak peek of what this will look like, then check out the new Product Terms site here: https://bit.ly/2ByfWq2.
Azure Monetary Commitment is the upfront payment an Enterprise Agreement customer makes for use of the Azure consumption services, which is then decremented on a monthly basis as the services are used. This is now renamed to Azure prepayment but there are no other changes in terms of how it works. Find the Azure prepayment section starting on page 53 of the July 2020 Product Terms, and download the document itself here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.
There’s an updated (July 2020) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide.
The main update is for the two new Fraud Protection capabilities – Account Protection and Loss Protection.
Get an overview of Fraud Protection and its licensing on our blog here: https://bit.ly/3f1eLNp, and download the updated Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/32WlZjp.
Azure Cost Management is constantly evolving to help customers better understand where they’re accruing costs in the cloud, to identify and prevent bad spending patterns, and to optimise costs.
Updates to the tools for June 2020 include more flexibility for budget notifications, the ability to subscribe to active cost recommendations with Advisor digests, and improvements in the transfer of Subscription ownership. There are also some new ways to save money with Azure, as well as some new videos to learn more about Azure Cost Management.
Find the detail on all of these enhancements in the Azure Cost Management June 2020 update here: https://bit.ly/2CRFIGl.
If you’re a fan of Get Licensing Ready then you’ll be excited to know that there are some new tracks and modules for you to work through. All the prior certifications (MLSS, MLSE etc) remain under a “Prior GLR tracks” tab, but now there are separate “Microsoft products” and “Microsoft programs” tabs where you’ll find the existing modules and some new ones too.
Check out the new “Licensing Specialist: cloud solutions” track which has brand new modules about licensing Windows and SQL Server in Azure, and how the Microsoft server products are licensed in the public cloud.
If you’re not already a GLR user, head to https://getlicensingready.com – it’s free to register, and you’ll find your day just got better from a licensing perspective 🙂
Microsoft announce two new capabilities for Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection: the Account Protection capability safeguards user accounts by combating fake account creation, account takeover, and fraudulent account access, and the Loss Prevention capability helps to mitigate losses by identifying potential fraud on returns and discounts. This adds to the original Purchase Protection capability which protects online revenue by improving the acceptance rate of commerce transactions.
From a licensing perspective, organisations choose their primary capability which also includes transactions for the other capabilities. For example, the Account Protection licence includes 100,000 Account Protection transactions, as well as 2,000 Purchase Protection transactions and 4,000 Loss Prevention transactions. Each of the primary capabilities costs $1,000 per month, and then additional transactions may be added in increments of $150 if the number of total transactions is below a certain amount (which is different for each capability), and $100 if it’s more.
You can find the original announcement here: https://bit.ly/301aLbJ and the Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide gives more details on the amount of transactions included for each of the capabilities and their add-ons. Find the July 2020 Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/32WlZjp.
The June 2020 Product Terms contains an amendment to the definition of Firstline Worker devices. A Firstline Worker is typically someone whose job is primarily based away from a PC – think construction worker or doctor – but they do need some access to technology.
Rules for assigning Office 365 F3 and Microsoft 365 F1/F3 licences (the Firstline Worker plans) are based on the user’s primary device. Prior to June 2020, a Firstline Worker was not allowed to have a Dedicated Device – a computing device with a screen of 10.1″ or larger used by the user for more than 60% of their total work time in any 90-day period.
It’s simpler from June 2020 – the user’s primary device must have a single screen smaller than 10.1″ OR they must share their primary device with other qualifying Firstline Workers.
Find the rules on page 58 of the June 2020 Product Terms and find the Product Terms document itself here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.
Microsoft Endpoint Manager is the name for all of Microsoft’s endpoint management solutions, and includes System Center Configuration Manager and Microsoft Intune. The benefit of Microsoft Endpoint Manager is that it makes it easier for organisations to concurrently manage Windows 10 devices with both Configuration Manager and Microsoft Intune, a configuration called co-management. Bringing everything up to date, the July 2020 Product Terms updates the name of System Center Configuration Manager to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager.
In terms of co-management licensing, organisations don’t have to buy both Configuration Manager and Intune licences: if they are licensed for Configuration Manager then they are automatically licensed for Intune for co-managing Windows PCs, and if they are licensed for Intune, then they are also automatically licensed for Configuration Manager for co-managing Windows PCs. There are some management scenarios which aren’t covered with the co-management rights and this article has some useful instances of when you would also need a full Intune licence when you have a Configuration Manager licence, for example: https://bit.ly/2WIZieT.
There’s a name change but there aren’t changes to the licensing of Configuration Manager. As a recap, there’s a current branch and long-term servicing branch (LTSB) for Configuration Manager, with the current branch providing an active servicing model as you would expect. Customers who have active Software Assurance or a subscription to EMS E3 (for example) may use this branch. Configuration Manager must always be purchased with Software Assurance through a Volume Licensing agreement and the LTSB is intended for customers who have perpetual licence rights to Configuration Manager but have let the SA expire. This is a useful article if you want to learn more about branches and licensing: https://bit.ly/3hpw0JX.
And finally, there’s a Microsoft Endpoint Manager FAQ document which you may find useful here: https://bit.ly/32JtVog.