Interested in Dynamics CRM 2013 licensing? Here’s a great set of resources including Licensing and Pricing Guides, Briefs, and Presentations. Note that you need access to Partner Source to get to the content: http://bit.ly/15JsvSY
Microsoft Licensing Guides
All of Microsoft’s product licensing guides in one place! Check out our new pages with links to all these useful resources: http://bit.ly/182fp9f
WWLP blog on SkyDrive Pro Licensing
SkyDrive Pro licensing: a useful WWLP blog entry covering acquiring SkyDrive Pro (through an Office 365 plan), licensing it (via a SharePoint Standard CAL) and why you need the SkyDrive Pro client (to sync your SkyDrive Pro libraries with your local device): http://bit.ly/14x3zOh
SCE v EAP Price Changes – the Maths!
Those who know me may recall that I started life as a maths teacher, so a chance to dabble in a bit of algebra is always a treat. And for those of you who hate algebra and could never see a use for it – well, here it is – a way of working out the price changes in SCE (the new EA Server and Cloud Enrolment) and EAP (the old Enterprise Application Platform Enrolment).
We know that in the EAP, licences are split into either Standard or Enterprise flavours and customers get either 15% or 40% discount off the price of a new licence and no discount off the compulsory three year’s SA. So, for a SQL Standard licence costing “S” the price paid over 3 years is 0.85 x S + 3 x SA. Since SA is 25% of the licence price, it’s 0.85 x S + 3 x 0.25 x S = 1.6 x S. In other words, if you know the list price of a SQL Standard licence, the customer actually pays 1.6 times that through the lifetime of the EAP.
Good. Let’s do the same with a SQL Enterprise licence. Using a similar approach with “E” being an Enterprise licence, the price paid over 3 years is 0.6 x E + 3 x SA or 0.6 x E + 3 x 0.25 x E = 1.35 x E. So the customer pays 1.35 times the price of an Enterprise licence through the EAP.
And what about SCE? Well, there’s no differentiation between Standard and Enterprise licences (good) and there’s a 15% discount off the TOTAL L&SA price (interesting). Again taking a SQL Standard edition licence costing “S” we can work out that the customer pays 0.85 x S + 0.85 x 3 x SA or 0.85 x S + 0.85 x 3 x 0.25 x S which (finally) comes to 1.4875 x S. Luckily, since the calculations are the same for the Enterprise edition, we’re done!
And the conclusions? Well, for a SQL Standard licence, the customer pays 1.6 times the licence in an EAP and 1.4875 times the licence in SCE. Dividing 1.4875 by 1.6 gives 0.9296 which tells me that it’s a 7% decrease in price for the total L&SA price over the life of the SCE. For SQL Enterprise, it’s 1.4875 divided by 1.35 which gives 1.101 which represents a 10% increase. So, not huge changes in price for a customer.
So don’t you wish you’d paid attention in your maths lessons? 😉
Overview of the Changes to the September 2013 Volume Licensing Product List
This month we bid a fond farewell to a few products and, appropriately for this back-to-school time of year, say “oooh, aren’t you growing fast?” to others.
It’s goodbye to the following:
- Office 365 Plans K2 and E2: as you’ve probably picked up, the features in these SKUs are now consolidated into the K1 and E1 offerings and that’s what customers should renew into
- System Center Essentials 2010: Microsoft confirmed some time ago that this would be the last release of the product, and in March 2013 SA-only and L&SA SKUs were removed, with the final L-only SKUs going this month
- TechNet subscriptions: the retirement of TechNet was announced by Microsoft in July 2013 and the three key SKUs for Volume Licensing customers are removed this month
As we’ve been expecting, there are now an increased number of Office 365 plans available through the Open and Open Value programs. Commercial customers can now buy the following SKUs through their agreements, with Government and Academic customers having access to an only very slightly different set:
- Office 365 Plans E1 and E3
- Office 365 ProPlus
- Exchange Online Plan 1
- Exchange Online Protection
And leaving to last the fastest growing set of services, namely Azure. Just as an aside, if you’d searched for “Azure” in the September 2012 Product List you’d have found 28 instances – a search in this month’s yields 112 – an impressive year-on-year growth!
This month sees the addition of the Windows Azure Active Directory Rights Management Services User Subscription Licence (and it’s no better abbreviated to a WAADRMS USL is it?!) This licenses (of course) access to the Azure Active Directory Rights Management Service. There’s further, useful information in the July 2013 PUR where we’re told on pages 26/28 that this USL will also license users for on-premise Rights Management through Windows Server 2012. On a related note, there’s also confirmation on these pages and on page 86 that Office 365 E3 and E4 USLs include access to Rights Management both on-premise (Windows Server 2012 ADRMS) and in the cloud (Windows Azure ADRMS).
RDS 2012 R2 FAQ
Windows Server 2012 R2 RDS FAQ document from Microsoft. Three key takeaways: the licensing model remains the same (RDS 2012 CALs are allowed to access Windows Server 2012 R2, and RDS CALs are required in most virtual desktop scenarios), there will be a new SA benefit for RDS CALs (eventually – “by next year” – they will permit access to hosted Windows Server desktops without an RDS SAL), new prices are confirmed for the RDS CALs (word on the street is that there’s a 20% increase): http://bit.ly/18wY96Z.
July 2013 PUR updated for Exchange Online Protection
Exchange Online Protection provides cloud-based email protection for Microsoft Exchange Online cloud-hosted mailboxes or an on-premise Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 environment. But what USLs or CALs include rights to EOP? Page 74 of the July 2013 PUR confirms the complete list. More interestingly perhaps, it also confirms when EOP licences are NOT required: for shared, resource, and application-based mailboxes.
Microsoft VL Blog – SQL DR rights v Failover
SQL Server fail-over versus cold disaster recovery rights – a useful Microsoft Volume Licensing blog entry comparing these two rights: http://bit.ly/19MjkF9
Azure AD RMS
An engagingly written (yes really!) whitepaper on Microsoft Rights Management including Azure RMS. I’d recommend reading the whole thing, but otherwise the licensing information starts on page 14. Three key takeaways: no licences are required for consuming rights protected content (only if you’re doing the protecting), Office 365 E3 and E4 already include Azure RMS (these suites are said to be “RMS-enlightened”), the Azure RMS subscription will be available as an add-on subscription both through MOSA and the EA (looks like September 2013). Get the whitepaper here: http://bit.ly/1cacWIJ.
MLSS accreditations
Are you working through your MLSS accreditations? If so, you’re in good company – there’s an exam taken every 5 minutes and 18 seconds somewhere in the world! http://getlicensingready.com