September 2014 MPSA Licensing Manual

There’s a new (September 2014) MPSA Licensing Manual which has been updated for SA.

Customers buying SA through the MPSA are governed by this document rather than the Product List (page 7) and there are pages of the rules you’d expect on how the benefits are calculated.

Most noteworthy, Planning Services, Training Vouchers, and 24×7 Problem Resolution Support are now ALL calculated on a points-based system and you can find the detail on page 8.

Get this updated guide here: http://bit.ly/1s4V5yE.

Get Licensing Ready exams: MPSA now included

The GLR Elves have been busy… Get Licensing Ready is a popular licensing exam site from Microsoft and it’s just been updated with amendments to exams in both the SMB and LORG tracks.

The “Online Services and SPLA” exam has been retired and there’s no longer a requirement to take SMB exams in the LORG track and vice versa.

Most notable though is the inclusion of an MPSA track which consists of three modules, the first of which has also been added to the MLSS LORG level. If you need a new certificate to hang on your office wall then head over to http://getlicensingready.com as quick as you can.

Accessing Key Licensing Documents

There’s a change to the pages where you download the PUR, the Product List and other key licensing documents. You’ll now find them all on a single page here: http://bit.ly/1B53SRQ.

Microsoft’s new Volume Licensing Exam: 74-678

September 2014 sees Microsoft introduce a new Volume Licensing exam for the first time in over 5 years. Exam 74-678 is aimed at licensing professionals who sell licensing solutions to large organisations, and replaces exam 70-672. The sister exam (70-671 – for SMB organisations) doesn’t look like it’s being refreshed at this point.

The official exam page is here: http://bit.ly/1vWByya but what can you expect from this brand new exam? As before, you need knowledge in four key areas so let’s take a look at those.

The first area is the products and their licensing which, we’re told, will account for between 30 and 35% of the questions in the exam. One of the discussion points in the past was actually what versions of the products you needed to know about. Here we see quite a comprehensive list of products with their specific versions. Hurrah! It seems bang up to date including, for example, Windows 8.1, and has all the products you’d expect (Windows Server and System Center 2012 R2, SQL Server 2014, Lync, Exchange and SharePoint 2013, Office 2013) – except perhaps Dynamics CRM 2013 which is tagged on the end of the list. There’s also a much higher emphasis on the Online Services products and you’re going to have to know about Office 365, Intune, CRM Online, as well as Microsoft Azure. There’s also a list of the documentation you need to know about – the PUR and the Product List for example.

Then there’s a section on the licensing programs – again 30 to 35% of questions – where you’ll need to recommend the right licensing program for a customer based on some criteria which are given. Select Plus and EAs are listed, as is the new Microsoft Products and Services Agreement (MPSA). Interesting! It doesn’t specifically call out the Server and Cloud Enrolment but given that the wording before the lists throughout is “include but not limited to” I think we can assume it’s in, given its importance to Microsoft. As usual, you’re also going to need to know the specific benefits of Volume Licensing over OEM or FPP licences.

Next up is a section on Software Assurance benefits where we can expect 15 to 20% of questions to be focussed. There are some benefits called out – Licence Mobility for example – but again, I think you should assume that you need a knowledge of what each benefit is, and how it meets customer needs, as you did before.

Finally, a section that’s always included the things that I personally find least interesting like licence activation, and SA benefit activation, and you can expect 10 to 15% of questions to cover these areas.

Our website will soon go live with the resources that we’re producing to help you study for, and pass, this exam. Exciting times!

Office 365 ProPlus: Shared Computer Activation

Native RDS support for Office 365 ProPlus has arrived and that means a slight change to the licensing.

Previously, Office 365 ProPlus couldn’t be deployed to users’ devices using RDS and there was a note in the Product List which allowed customers to use Office Professional Plus 2013 software to enable this scenario, which counted as 1 of the 5 allowed installations.

From 1 September 2014 there’s something called Shared Computer Activation – now, Office 365 ProPlus CAN be installed in an RDS environment, and this no longer counts against the 5 installations.

See page 51 of the September 2014 Product List, this Microsoft blog: http://bit.ly/ZfxoXr and TechNet article: http://bit.ly/1s9EOX4

Microsoft MPSA FAQ Page

The MPSA FAQ page has been updated to include the availability of Software Assurance from 1 September 2014. It’s quite a useful page if you’re getting up to speed with this new agreement and you can find it here: http://bit.ly/1pHzpH6.

SQL 2014: Determining Core Licences at SA Renewal: April 2014

If you need to know how SQL Processor licences are renewed into Core licences at SA renewal, then this is the guide for you.

Snazzily entitled “Determining SQL Server 2014 Core Licensing Requirements at SA Renewal” it’s a comprehensive guide to the whole process including a section on using the MAP Toolkit. Get it here: http://bit.ly/1zG13E8.

SA is now available in the MPSA

Today – 1 September 2014 – Software Assurance is available in Microsoft’s new MPSA agreement.

If you want to get up to speed with the MPSA then invest a mere seven and a half minutes in our mini training video: http://bit.ly/Vx8oZa.

SQL 2014 Virtualisation Licensing Guide: June 2014

This SQL 2014 Virtualisation Licensing Guide is a good read: it’s got sections on licensing individual VMs, Licence Mobility, and unlimited virtualisation, as well as clarification of the rules around hyper-threading, and a great table in the appendix which shows the virtualisation licensing rules for past versions of SQL Server.

Get the guide here and enjoy: http://bit.ly/1tcNCNr.

SQL 2014 Licensing Guide: April 2014

A jolly useful 31 pages of SQL Licensing Loveliness. This is a great guide which has been updated for SQL 2014 and includes useful sections on licensing Parallel Data Warehouse, the anomalies of SQL Enterprise Server/CAL, as well as being updated for the cloud.

There are all the other sections you would expect and you can find the guide here: http://bit.ly/VNVI0L