September 2015 MPSA Changes

Microsoft announce that there are two big updates for the MPSA from 1st September 2015, with the addition of:

  • Enterprise Cloud Suite (ECS)
  • Multi-year subscriptions for Online Services

ECS was previously only available via the Enterprise Agreement (EA) and includes Office 365 E3, the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) and Windows per User, as well as a number of other services– see more info here http://bit.ly/13umyz1.

The second addition enables MPSA customers to order one, two, or three-year subscriptions for certain Online Services with price protection for all incremental orders.

The Microsoft WWLP blog post is here http://bit.ly/1F9uB61

Volume Licensing Guide

There’s a July 2015 Volume Licensing Guide released by Microsoft giving a broad introduction to both program licensing and product licensing.

It covers agreements for commercial, government, nonprofit, and academic customers as well as those aimed at software and service partners.

There’s a nice table on page 19 comparing the commercial programs which is a useful summary. The product licensing section of the document isn’t updated for Windows 10 yet, but again is a good overview of how the licensing works for each product.

Get this guide here: http://bit.ly/1MMvySK.

Microsoft Operations Management Suite

The Microsoft Operations Management Suite (which manages Windows and Linux workloads across a Windows Server datacenter, as well as Azure, Amazon Web Services, OpenStack and VMWare environments) was released in July 2015.

The Suite services are available separately charged as Azure consumption services, or via an Add-on for System Center Standard or Datacenter.

The final page of this OMS datasheet details pricing for the Add-on – for which there’s a promotion until 31 December 2015, as well as listing all of the Azure services that make up the Suite: http://bit.ly/1NqeiDf.

MDOP 2015 available

Microsoft announce that MDOP 2015 is available for download from VLSC and MSDN. Changes include support for Windows 10 and this announcement gives you an overview of the other enhancements to the existing components: http://bit.ly/1LiLtX7.

Microsoft Licensing and the Google Cloud Platform

Google announced in mid July 2015 that Windows Server 2012 R2 is now supported on the Google Cloud Platform: http://bit.ly/1MxgkST.

Windows Server image pricing starts at $0.02 USD/hour on top of the virtual machine cost. All Windows images are charged for a minimum of 10 minutes and after that are charged by the minute, rounded up to the nearest minute: http://bit.ly/1Pve4Ke. License Mobility for server applications is also supported and Google talks about that here: http://bit.ly/1fkBjJV.

Microsoft Azure Cost Estimator tool

The Microsoft Azure Cost Estimator tool is updated for July 2015. This is a nice tool for helping you to estimate the cost of running an environment in Microsoft Azure. You can scan your on-premises environment to create an estimate or create a completely customised scenario.

Download the tool here: http://bit.ly/1MjzWs5.

Cloud Solution Provider Program

The Cloud Solution Provider program allows partners to provide a complete managed cloud solution for their customers. The program is growing – Azure and CRM Online have recently been added and the program itself is available in 131 markets.

If you want to find out more about CSP there’s an extremely comprehensive FAQ site here (http://bit.ly/1Unlh1V) with over 230 questions covering the products, contracts and billing, and available admin tools.

Exchange Licensing FAQ

Even if you know quite a bit about Exchange licensing I think you’ll learn something on this Exchange Licensing FAQ page: http://bit.ly/1UxpoIN. It covers, for example, shared mailboxes, “Hybrid Edition” server keys, and the differences with Exchange Online Kiosk subscriptions.

June 2015 License Verification Form

The License Verification Form is used to record which server application licences with SA have been assigned to Azure virtual machines or to Service Provider’s shared hardware.

The latest form is dated June 2015 and has been updated for Skype for Business: http://bit.ly/1E6vPsV.

If you want to learn more about the whole licence verification process then this customer guide is a useful resource: http://bit.ly/1o9hNAQ.

Advanced Threat Analytics Licensing Datasheet

Advanced Threat Analytics has been added to the Enterprise CAL Suite, the ECAL Bridges, as well as the Enterprise Mobility Suite and the Enterprise Cloud Suite. However, it’s also available as a standalone offering and there’s a new licensing datasheet explaining all. Essentially it’s a Client Management Licence model which can be purchased, as usual, by user or OSE.

The licensing datasheet also has a useful FAQ page – find it here in the Core Infrastructure section: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides.