Visio Visual for Power BI available

Microsoft announce (July 2018) that Visio Visual for Power BI is generally available. This allows a user to use Visio Online and Power BI together to illustrate and compare data as both diagrams and visualisations in one place. From a licensing perspective, Office 365 subscribers can use five free trial instances of Visio Visual and after that, any user can view visuals, and users licensed with Visio Online Plan 1 or Plan 2 can edit a Visio Visual in Power BI.

Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/2P9zTom.

Azure Marketplace Invoicing

Third-party services purchased through the Azure Marketplace are typically invoiced separately in an Enterprise Agreement, outside of Monetary Commitment. From 1 March, 2018 there were some Linux Support options and Linux virtual machines that were changed to consume Monetary Commitment.

Find the announcement and list of relevant services here: http://bit.ly/2Nn74Ed.

Government Licensing Guides

We’ve added a new section to our Licensing Guides emporium for documents to do with the Government licensing programs.

Find them in the Volume Licensing Programs section at: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.

Managing Azure Reservations

You can buy an Azure Reservation to save money on the infrastructure charges (compute) for virtual machines or Azure SQL Databases. After purchase you can make adjustments to that reservation: change the Subscription it applies to, split a single reservation into two reservations, add or change users who can manage a reservation, and optimise for VM size flexibility or capacity priority.

Find a useful article with instructions here: http://bit.ly/2PnMOUC.

The Ultimate Guide to Windows Server on Azure

This not-too-long guide from Microsoft might be useful if you’re starting to think about taking Windows Server workloads to Azure. It outlines possible benefits, how to decide whether to migrate or extend a server farm, and of course the cost savings associated with the Azure Hybrid Benefit. Find it here: http://bit.ly/2KZtwCp.

Microsoft 365 Business FAQ

If you’re interested in Microsoft 365 Business then there’s an FAQ which may be useful. From a licensing perspective it answers questions such as: Can I add Office 365 Add-ons to Microsoft 365 Business (Yes); Can I add Phone System and Calling Plans (No); and can Microsoft 365 Business customers create hosted Windows 10 VMs (No).

Find the FAQ here: http://bit.ly/2wfBH7c.

Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (July 2018) Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing Guide. There are no major changes – just the tidying up of some Business Central branding throughout, but if you like to have the latest copy to hand, then find it as usual at http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.

Managing Windows 10 CSP Subscriptions

If you have responsibility for deploying and managing Windows 10 Subscriptions in CSP then there are three interesting documents that you might find useful: An Introduction to Windows 10 Subscriptions in CSP; The Role of Azure AD in Windows 10 Cloud Subscriptions; and Windows 10 Upgrade Benefits for CSP Customers.

Find all of these documents with their overviews here: http://bit.ly/2P1h6ML.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (July 2018) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide. There are just a few corrections made to this version which you can find detailed in the Change Log on page 50. Find this Guide here: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.

Azure SQL Database Reserved Capacity

Microsoft announce the General Availability of Azure SQL Database Reserved Capacity for single and elastic pool databases. If you’re familiar with Reserved Instances for virtual machines, then this is the same kind of thing for the Azure SQL Database service. Essentially, you can save money by prepaying for SQL Database vCores for a one or three-year term. In addition, you can bring your own SQL Server licences (either via active SA or the new Server Subscriptions) for an even more cost-effective solution.

SQL Database Reserved Capacity shares other similarities with Reserved Instances too: a Reservation can be assigned to either a single Azure Subscription or shared, and there’s vCore Size Flexibility as well where the Reservation can be applied dynamically to any databases and elastic pools within a performance tier and region.

To find out more, find the Microsoft announcement here: http://bit.ly/2vJP2oZ and information on how to buy Reservations here: http://bit.ly/2P8Pjdp.