Starting in August 2015, the Online Services Terms (OST) document will be updated monthly.
Get the document here: http://bit.ly/MSvlterms.
Product List and PUR Combined
There’s big Volume Licensing news this 1st of July – the Product List and the Product Use Rights (PUR) documents are combined into one document called the Product Terms, which will be updated monthly.
There’s an FAQ on this new document here: http://bit.ly/1RS3gFP and an overview video towards the bottom of this page, where you can also download the document: http://bit.ly/MSvlterms.
We’ll do a more detailed blog post soon highlighting some of the important changes.
Office available for Android phone
Microsoft announce the general availability of the new Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for Android phone – http://bit.ly/1JkxvWJ.
As usual, everyone gets access to the core features, while the premium features require a qualifying Office 365 subscription.
This page is useful for finding out exactly what the qualifying Office 365 plans are: http://bit.ly/1IAfQEP.
Windows Server 2012 R2 Licensing Guide
It’s always good to come across a new Licensing Guide and this Windows Server 2012 R2 one is pretty comprehensive. It’s dated April 2015 and has all the information contained in previously released datasheets as well as a long FAQ section where you’ll find all the usual suspects as well as a couple of useful Azure-related questions (Q21 onwards) clarifying a couple of Licence Mobility issues.
Definitely worth downloading for your Useful Licensing Guides folder: http://bit.ly/1e3uNa4.
Product Usage Guide – an Overview
If you’re an Action Pack subscriber or a Microsoft partner with a competency then you have rights to use Microsoft software and it’s the Product Usage Guide which details these rights. While most of the rights are exactly what you’d expect, there are some interesting changes and exceptions which are worth knowing about.
SA Benefits
First of all, there are virtually no SA benefits associated with the licences that you get as a partner, so if you want to deploy VDI desktops or Windows To Go for example, then you’d need to acquire Windows licences with SA (or VDA) under a normal Volume Licensing agreement. The same would be true for SA benefits such as unlimited virtualisation or Licence Mobility associated with SQL Server. However, competency partners do get access to Office Online (Office Web Apps) and the Multi-Language Pack with their Office Professional Plus licences.
CALs
CALs are on the list of available licences for many partners, and can generally be used as Device or User CALs. If you’re eligible for a Project Professional licence then be aware it doesn’t have a Project Server CAL included, and the Exchange Enterprise CAL comes without Services so licences for Exchange Online Protection, for example, would have to be acquired separately.
Other Rights
And finally, there are a couple of rights excluded that could catch you out if you’re expecting the rights to be the same as a regular Volume Licensing licence. The first is the fact that there are no downgrade rights included at all and in fact partners have 12 months to upgrade internal-use software to a newer version. It’s only competency partners who can run Office Professional Plus 2013 in an RDS environment and no partners are allowed to use their Office licences in a Windows To Go deployment. And lastly, as you’d possibly expect, the software isn’t to be used for employee personal use at home.
The Product Usage Guide is also useful for details of licence maximums, sharing of licences, and licence entitlements, as well as activation of on-premises and cloud services.
Enjoy the full 35 pages of the guide by downloading it here: http://bit.ly/1ecZavu.
Overview of the Changes to the June 2015 Volume Licensing Product List
If you look at page 10 of the June 2015 Product List you’ll find that there are no changes listed for this month. So, we had to dig a bit deeper to find the (admittedly extraordinarily minor!) changes:
- First of all, the Planning Services which used to include Lync Server and now include Skype for Business Server are indeed updated to be “Skype for Business and Exchange Deployment Planning Services (S&EDPS)” on page 68
- Then there are some changes to the Microsoft Azure Services section on pages 41/42 with a slight amendment to the definition of “Consumption Rates” and the inclusion of MPSA as a qualifying agreement to set pricing for the Server pool and thus the Azure services in an EA
- And finally, there’s wording added on page 58 for the purchase eligibility of the Office 365 From SA User SLs. This clarifies that EA customers who licensed Office 365 before 1 August 2014 may indeed also purchase From SA USLs at renewal for any additional Office 365 users that they added during their Enrolment term
Windows 10 Upgrades
Microsoft announced last week that Windows 10 will be available on 29 July 2015.
This FAQ gives lots of information on the upgrade process, but here are the key licensing facts:
- The free upgrades will be available for Windows 7 SP1 and 8.1 devices for a year;
- Home editions will upgrade to Windows 10 Home, while Professional and Ultimate editions will go to Windows 10 Pro;
- Customers with Windows Enterprise licences will need Software Assurance to upgrade to Windows 10 Enterprise.
Read the whole FAQ here: http://bit.ly/1KPXWR8.
MSDN Benefits
This is a nice article on 10 of the MSDN benefits including rights to deploy to Azure, perpetual use rights, Azure credit, Visual Studio Online, and Store and Office 365 Developer Accounts. Find it here: http://bit.ly/1LQ1Av2.
Coffee Break Video: Select Plus Retirement
There’s a bit of confusion over the dates associated with the retirement of Select Plus… Be confused no longer – invest a mere four minutes and watch our latest Coffee Break video on this very topic: http://bit.ly/LSyoutube.
Microsoft Azure – Licensing Tips
Don’t be overlicensed in Azure! This Microsoft blog post gives some good tips about Azure licensing and it’s worth a read to make sure you’re not overlicensed: http://bit.ly/1HxOFtD.