Device-based licensing for Office 365 ProPlus

Microsoft announce that an Office 365 ProPlus device add-on licence will be available for EA and EAS customers in the summer of 2020.

This will effectively allow an Office 365 ProPlus licence to be assigned to a device so that multiple users can use Office 365 ProPlus on that device, whether or not they have their own User SL for Office 365.

A similar add-on was made available in August 2019 for education customers with an EES, where the add-ons are free as long as all Education Qualified Users are licensed with an Office 365 ProPlus User SL.

Find the latest announcement for commercial customers here: http://bit.ly/2KSJjnB and recap on the education offer here: http://bit.ly/30enR2Z.

Azure Cost Management: February update

Azure Cost Management is a set of tools that helps customers and partners to feel in control of their spend on the Azure consumption services. Features are continually being added to this service and the February updates include new Power BI reports for EA customers, and greater visibility into the individual meter costs that make up the total cost for a resource. Find the update here: http://bit.ly/3aLFHPP.

Additional availability for FastTrack for Azure

FastTrack for Azure helps customers to accelerate the deployment of their Azure solutions and it’s at no cost from Microsoft for eligible customers.

Eligibility is focussed around having an identified Azure project supported by the FastTrack program that’s expected to reach at least $5,000 of service usage per month within 12 months of deployment.

FastTrack services have recently also become available in Japan (http://bit.ly/2Vk9jza) and countries in the Asia Pacific region (http://bit.ly/32qT6tn).

Find out more about FastTrack for Azure here: http://bit.ly/2kriyNO.

Host Integration Server

BizTalk Server 2020 is added to the March 2020 Product Terms document with information on page 15 detailing a customer’s allowable usage of Host Integration Server.

Essentially this is allowed when BizTalk Server Core licences are purchased, and the edition of BizTalk acquired defines the rights – for example BizTalk Server Branch Edition licences restrict the use of HIS software to branch office deployments.

Find the current Product Terms document here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.

VDA Add-on for Microsoft 365 E3/E5

A VDA Add-on for Microsoft 365 E3/E5 is added to page 57 of the March 2020 Product Terms

This Subscription Licence allows Microsoft 365 E3/E5 users to access a Windows Enterprise Virtual Desktop Infrastructure on dedicated servers when the users don’t have a primary device with a Qualifying Operating System – for example, users whose primary device is a thin client or a Mac. Note that these licences are only available to customers buying through an Enterprise Agreement.

Find the current Product Terms document here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.

Azure products by region

If you want an easy way to check availability of the Azure products by region then this is useful page: http://bit.ly/39S81zt. Choose the product family and region(s) and then see whether services are generally available, in preview, or slated for future availability with expected timelines.

BizTalk Server 2020

Microsoft make BizTalk Server 2020 available with the usual Standard, Enterprise and Branch editions. Find out what’s new here: http://bit.ly/2SP8BZ1.

Dynamics 365 Mixed Reality Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (February 2020) Dynamics 365 Mixed Reality Licensing Guide. There’s just a small change confirming the file formats that are supported when importing 3D models on page 6. Find this updated guide here: http://bit.ly/MixRealLGFeb2020.

Power Apps Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (February 2020) Power Apps Licensing Guide. There are changes for the renaming of Talent to Human Resources, and Retail to Commerce, and a correction made for the Power Apps per app default capacity where the File capacity should be 20 GB (not 2 GB), and the Log capacity should be 2 GB (not 200 MB). Find full change details, as usual, in the Change Log on page 25, and the guide itself here: http://bit.ly/PowAppsLGFeb2020.

Azure Reservations

Azure Reservations help customers to save money when they can make a duration commitment to an Azure service. Typically the duration is one or three years with, of course, the best savings to be made on a three-year commitment.

Today there are sixteen categories of Reservations ranging from Reserved Instances for virtual machines to Reserved Capacity for storage or database services, as well as Software Plans for Red Hat or SUSE Linux. Buying and managing Reservations, and understanding how discounts are applied can be confusing, but there’s some excellent Microsoft documentation available.

Find it here to dip into as you need to, or save it for the weekend and read it end-to-end: http://bit.ly/36W4KgJ.