Changes to Intune and EMS E3

Microsoft add extra security and management functionality into their Intune and EMS E3 offerings and will increase prices from 1 July, 2021. Licences for Intune will increase from $6 to $8 per user per month, and EMS E3 from $9 to $11, although the price for Microsoft 365 E3 will not change.

Find details of the increased functionality, and price changes here: http://bit.ly/3smPpRw.

EMS E3 and E5

The Enterprise Mobility Suite is now Enterprise Mobility + Security and is available in E3 and E5 flavours. This is a useful page to find out the components of each suite and the business problems they solve: http://bit.ly/2e4hA2E.

Refer to page 53 of the October 2016 Product Terms document to see the User SLs available (Full, Add-on and From SA) and their availability in the different Volume Licensing programs.

Windows, EMS and ECS Name Changes

It’s all change! Firstly, Microsoft announce that Windows 10 Enterprise will be renamed to Windows 10 Enterprise E3, and that Windows 10 Enterprise E5 will be introduced which includes Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection.

Then, Enterprise Mobility Suite will be renamed Enterprise Mobility + Security and, again, there will be E3 and E5 flavours of this.

There’s a good diagram here (http://bit.ly/29Cc0Er) which shows you the components of both of these editions.

And finally, the Enterprise Cloud Suite will be called Secure Productive Enterprise E3/E5 containing the relevant Office 365, EM+S and Windows 10 Enterprise plans.

Find the Microsoft announcement here: http://bit.ly/29ur3we.

Bridge CALs Available in Open Value

From November 1st there are Bridge CALs available for Open Value customers.

When do you need a Bridge CAL? Well, if you’ve got an enterprise wide commitment to Office and a CAL Suite but want to transition to either EMS or Office 365 then you need a way to continue to pay for the on-premises components that haven’t transitioned – and that’s the Bridge CAL. They’ve been available in the Enterprise Agreement for a few years and now Open Value customers are able to buy them too.

See page 14 of the November 2015 Product Terms document.

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

EMS available in Open from 1 March 2015

Microsoft announce that the Enterprise Mobility Suite will be available through Open and Open Value licensing programs from 1 March 2015. From early March it will also be available to partners as part of the Internal Use Rights licences they receive through the Action Pack or Silver and Gold competencies. Read the announcement here: http://bit.ly/1LQ86lU.

Simplified Licence Management for Azure AD Premium and EMS

Microsoft announce a preview for group-based licence management to simplify the assignment of user licences for Azure AD Premium and the Enterprise Mobility Suite.

IT administrators can now assign a security group and Azure AD will automatically assign licences to all the members of the group. If a user is subsequently added to, or removed from the group, a licence will be automatically assigned or removed as appropriate.

Read the full blog post here: http://bit.ly/ZcSwOg.

Overview of the Changes to the July 2014 Volume Licensing Product List

There aren’t a huge number of changes this month to the Product List, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to take a closer look at a couple of the products which have been removed, and to report on what’s succeeded them and how you now acquire the equivalent services.

The first to go is Forefront Online Protection for Exchange which we’ve affectionately (?) called FOPE in the past. There’s a TechNet article (http://bit.ly/1nI6Kz2) which confirms that Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is the latest version of FOPE. You can acquire a standalone User Subscription Licence for about $1 a month (http://bit.ly/1kgEl44), or page 13 of the July 2014 Product List confirms that an Enterprise CAL Suite licence with active SA includes rights to EOP.

Exchange Hosted Encryption also leaves us. This msdn page (http://bit.ly/1qFm0Ad) tells us that Office 365 Message Encryption is the new version of EHE, and an announcement on the Office Blog (http://bit.ly/1nJ8AkI) gives details on how you get rights to this message encryption service.

And this brings me to another change to be aware of this month: the service that started off as “Windows Azure Active Directory Rights Management” has had a few name changes, and this month it’s more simply known as “Microsoft Rights Management” and a User Subscription Licence for this service will give you access to Office 365 Message Encryption. However, don’t forget the new and shiny Enterprise Mobility Suite, since that’s another way to acquire rights to Microsoft Rights Management too (http://bit.ly/1mQcAK9).

Finally, there are a couple of products added – the Support offerings for Microsoft Dynamics Marketing and Microsoft Social Listening. This link in the Product List (http://bit.ly/1rJonQO) is worth a look if you need to know more about these support options.