Customers buying their Azure services through an Enterprise Agreement or via the MCA-E have long been eligible for free Azure Standard Support, but Microsoft announce that this offer is coming to an end on 30 June, 2024. After that time, customers will need to purchase one of the paid-for support plans.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4cASdBh (search for “Azure support”), and details of the available support plans here: https://bit.ly/44i3x1h.
Microsoft announce that the centrally managed Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server is now generally available. This allows customers to assign eligible licences to their SQL Server resources in Azure at a whole Subscription or Billing Profile level rather than to individual resources, making it much easier to manage.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3MKf3MN, and the useful Learn documentation here: https://bit.ly/3Olhk2f.
The Microsoft Cost Management tools help you to manage your Microsoft cloud costs across Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure. There’s an excellent article giving an overview of the improvements that were made to the tools in 2022, as well as the new ways to save money that were introduced.
You can find the article here: http://bit.ly/3Wltkkw, with its many links to lots of useful resources.
Microsoft release Azure DevOps Server 2022 to the web with no changes to the existing Server/CAL licensing model. Find the announcement of availability here: https://bit.ly/3X26Oyv.
Microsoft announce the General Availability of Capacity Reservations for virtual machines.
A Capacity Reservation is linked to a specific virtual machine type running in a specific Azure data centre and ensures that there is always capacity available when you want to run a virtual machine of that type in that data centre.
They are priced the same as the Pay-As-You-Go prices for the VM, and if you have a matching Reserved Instance, that will automatically be applied to cover the charges of the Capacity Reservation.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3kiL53J, and a video explaining this new option here: https://bit.ly/3LFqVNr.
Microsoft announce the general availability of the Private Azure Marketplace.
This tenant level feature is built on top of the Azure Marketplace and enables an administrator to add apps from the Azure Marketplace into the Private Azure Marketplace that comply with their organisation’s policies and standards, thus making it easy for users to deploy these pre-approved apps within the organisation. Note that Microsoft apps are automatically added to the Private Azure Marketplace.
Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/30sADwz, and instructions on setting up the Private Azure Marketplace here: https://bit.ly/2J4wUjb.
Microsoft announce that Azure Cost Management capabilities are now available for Azure Government customers buying through azure.com.
Find out more about Azure for government (US federal agencies, state and local governments) here: http://bit.ly/3dk9nI8, and the Azure Cost Management announcement here: http://bit.ly/3jWjKTK.
Microsoft announce the General Availability of the Azure VMware solution enabling customers to seamlessly move VMware-based workloads from their data centres to Azure and integrate their VMware environment with Azure.
What’s interesting from a licensing perspective is that if customers are running Windows Server and SQL Server workloads then they can use the Azure Hybrid Benefit to reuse existing on-premises licences, and they can also save money on the infrastructure by purchasing Reserved Instances.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/34IRm1H, and information on the solution itself here: https://bit.ly/3ow1DWH.
Microsoft announce the public preview of the Private Azure Marketplace.
This tenant level feature is built on top of the Azure Marketplace and enables an administrator to add apps from the Azure Marketplace into the Private Azure Marketplace that comply with their organisation’s policies and standards thus making it easy for users to deploy these pre-approved apps within the organisation.
Note that Microsoft apps are automatically added to the Private Azure Marketplace.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3ooTofb, and instructions on setting up the Private Azure Marketplace here: https://bit.ly/2J4wUjb.
Azure Cost Management is constantly evolving to help customers better understand where they’re accruing costs in the cloud, to identify and prevent bad spending patterns, and to optimise costs.
Updates to the tools for June 2020 include more flexibility for budget notifications, the ability to subscribe to active cost recommendations with Advisor digests, and improvements in the transfer of Subscription ownership. There are also some new ways to save money with Azure, as well as some new videos to learn more about Azure Cost Management.
Find the detail on all of these enhancements in the Azure Cost Management June 2020 update here: https://bit.ly/2CRFIGl.