Dynamics 365 for Financials Pricing and Licensing Guide from Microsoft – useful for seeing the relevant use rights for users licensed with the Team Members and Full USLs. Find it in the Dynamics section of our Licensing Guides emporium: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Azure Services in CSP
Interested in knowing which Azure Services are available in CSP? The top level summary is “most of them”, but if you want the detail about precisely which 56 categories of Azure Services are available then this article will be useful: http://bit.ly/2qsHBkF.
Roll up your sleeves if you want to generate the list yourself – PowerShell is (as usual) required.
Office 365 ProPlus Updates
Microsoft announce changes to the way updates in Office 365 ProPlus are managed.
Firstly, the channel names are changed: from “Current Channel” to “Monthly Channel”, “First Release for Deferred Channel” to “Semi-annual Channel (Pilot)” and “Deferred Channel” to “Semi-annual Channel (Broad)”. The names tell us of another change – that unless you’re on the Monthly Channel, updates will now be twice a year rather than three times. This aligns with Windows 10, and updates will be in March and September. And the final change is that Semi-annual channel releases will now be supported for 18 months rather than 12 months.
These updates also apply to Visio Pro for Office 365 and the Project Online desktop client and will take effect in September 2017.
The full announcement is here: http://bit.ly/2qYqGD6 where you’ll also find recommended next steps and exact dates for the upcoming schedule of Office ProPlus releases.
Dynamics 365 Available in UK Data Centres
Microsoft makes Dynamics 365 available in UK data centres – find the full announcement here: http://bit.ly/2qI1VyO.
Power BI Premium
Microsoft announce Power BI Premium, a new member of the Power BI family joining Power BI Desktop and Power BI Pro. So, what’s new? Well, today, Power BI Desktop is free and it’s aimed at personal use, while Power BI Pro costs $9.99 per user per month and enables collaboration. Under the current licensing, if an organisation has a few users who publish reports and many users who consume them, then everyone needs to be licensed with a Power BI Pro licence.
Power BI Premium will be generally available late in the second quarter of 2017 and will be licensed by capacity. This means that a Power BI Pro licence will still be required for users publishing reports, but consumers will no longer need to be licensed if their organisation is covered by Power BI Premium. And how does the capacity licensing work? Well, it’s by node and luckily there’s a calculator available to work out just how many nodes you’re likely to need based on your estimated number of Pro, frequent and occasional users. Find the calculator here: http://bit.ly/2qTdPlG.
But what’s a node?! A server? An end-user endpoint? No. Properly called capacity nodes, they’re just a way of purchasing a certain number of virtual cores, memory and bandwidth, dedicated to a customer, that will be sufficient to power the required BI system. At launch, there will be three sizes – inspiringly called P1, P2 and P3 which, for example, give access to 8, 16 and 32 virtual cores. There’s a Microsoft Power BI Premium Whitepaper which gives you some more information on this and you can find it in the “Other” section of the “Application Servers” area in our Licensing Guides emporium at: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.
But that’s not the end of the story. There’s also an option for customers who want a hybrid solution and that’s possible with the new Power BI Report Server. When you purchase Power BI Premium you can use the same number of cores that you’ve purchased in the cloud with Power BI Report Server on-premises.
Find the Power BI Premium announcement here: http://bit.ly/2pXo1wt.
SQL Server 2017
Microsoft announce that the next version of SQL Server will be SQL Server 2017. It’s currently at the Community Technology Preview stage and when released will be available on Windows, Linux and Docker. Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/2pVaZiQ.
Microsoft Relationship Sales
Microsoft announce the Microsoft Relationship Sales solution. This links Dynamics 365 Sales with the LinkedIn Sales Navigator so that you can see LinkedIn information on Dynamics leads, contacts and accounts. It will be available from July 2017 and will cost $135 per user per month. Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/2pSfaLS.
Microsoft Hosting and Cloud Service Provider Newsletter
The April 2017 Microsoft Hosting and Cloud Service Provider Newsletter is out. There’s just one item of licensing interest: there was a minor update to the Services Provider License Agreement on 16 April, 2017 when the definition of a Reciprocal Service Provider was included.
Sign up for this free newsletter here: http://bit.ly/2gbk5iR.
Per Core Licensing Volume Licensing Brief
There’s an updated (April 2017) Per Core Licensing Volume Licensing Brief from Microsoft which gets things up to date for Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 Core licensing. Find it in the Core Infrastructure section in our Licensing Guides emporium here: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.
Windows 10 S
Microsoft announce Windows 10 S – a flavour of Windows 10 Pro that is, in Microsoft’s words, “optimised for security and performance”. It does this by working only with apps from the Windows Store and having Edge as its default browser. You can pay to switch to Windows 10 Pro through the Windows Store at any time, but you can’t then go back to Windows 10 S.
This FAQ gives you a good overview: http://bit.ly/2pB32Pt.