Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is added to the November 2020 Product Terms.

This is an add-on licence with a variety of qualifying licences dependent on which healthcare scenarios are important to you in the areas of enhanced patient engagement, empowering health team collaboration, or improved clinical and operational insights.

The licence is available through the Enterprise Agreement and costs $95 per user per month. The different qualifying licences and the scenarios they light up are detailed in a pricing datasheet which you can find here: https://bit.ly/3976nwv, and there’s a useful overview datasheet on the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare solution here: https://bit.ly/370gmRI.

Azure Monetary Commitment is now Azure prepayment

Azure Monetary Commitment is the upfront payment an Enterprise Agreement customer makes for use of the Azure consumption services, which is then decremented on a monthly basis as the services are used. This is now renamed to Azure prepayment but there are no other changes in terms of how it works. Find the Azure prepayment section starting on page 53 of the July 2020 Product Terms, and download the document itself 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.

Windows 7 ESU Promotion

Microsoft add a new promotion which entitles certain users to receive free Windows 7 Extended Security Updates. The rules? The users must be licensed with Windows E5, Microsoft 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5 Security through an Enterprise Agreement or Enterprise Agreement Subscription as of December 31, 2019. They’ll be able to use up to five devices to run a local installation of Windows covered by Windows 7 ESU 2020, or access virtual machines.

For the full details see page 104 of the June 2019 Product Terms document. Find the Product Terms document here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.

Microsoft 365 Licensing Updates

Microsoft’s December 2018 Licensing News article has three topics of interest covering Microsoft 365 licensing updates. Firstly, EA and MPSA customers can now take advantage of a single SKU for Microsoft 365 which means that they see a single item in their Admin Centers and License Summaries, rather than seeing Office 365, Windows and EMS as separate components.

Secondly, there’s details of Microsoft’s new Home Use Program offer. Historically, HUP has been a Software Assurance benefit where users of devices licensed with Office + SA could purchase Office for their home PCs at a heavily discounted price. That benefit still exists for Office 2019 but the article reveals that this will come to an end on 30 June, 2019.

The new HUP offer allows individuals to purchase Office 365 Home or Office 365 Personal annual subscriptions at a 30% discount. This is available to customers who have Office with Software Assurance but is also available to customers who qualify with a certain number of Office 365/Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 licences: 2,000 for commercial organisations, and 13,000 for education or charity institutions.

Now, this isn’t available worldwide yet and although you can see it’s live in most countries (see the UK site here, for example http://bit.ly/2B6guQG), the article states that China and Japan will have this benefit on 1 April, 2019, and if you check out the US site (http://bit.ly/2sOPW1Q) there’s a message telling you that the US launch will be in early 2019.

And finally, there’s an update on the dual use rights available when a customer has a Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 From SA licence. Currently there are special rights detailed in the Product Terms which allow customers to install “traditional” Office Professional Plus as well as Office 365 ProPlus. The article states that these rights will be removed from 1 August, 2019 so customers renewing agreements after that date will no longer be entitled to the special installation rights.

Find the December 2018 Licensing News article here: http://bit.ly/2R3bV2u.

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.

June 2016 EA Program Guide

There’s an updated (June 2016) Enterprise Agreement Program Guide. The major amendment is for the change in the minimum number of users/devices from 250 to 500 which came into effect on 1 July 2016. There are also other additions for some new SA benefits such as the Hybrid Use Benefit.

As usual, you can find this guide in our Licensing Guides store here: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.

Azure Support Upgrades for EA Customers

Microsoft announce a free Azure Support upgrade for EA customers.

It’s available for new or existing customers who have Azure Services on their EA and gives them an upgrade to an Azure Support Plan between 1 May 2016 and 30 June 2017 for 12 months.

The details from Microsoft are split across these two pages: http://bit.ly/1XZCUpL and http://bit.ly/1TBVG5k but we’ve consolidated it into the table below:

Azure Support Upgrade

Take a customer who has not purchased any Azure Support (the first row) – if he’s made a Monetary Commitment of less than $100,000 then he’s upgraded to an Azure Standard Support Plan, but if he spends more than $10,000 a month on Azure Services for 3 consecutive months or he does make a Monetary Commitment of at least $100,000 then he’s upgraded to Professional Direct Support.

You can see the options for the existing Standard Support customer – he’s automatically upgraded to Professional Direct Support but with the higher spend will also get 6 App Consulting Services sessions. And the existing Professional Direct Support customer receives either 6 or 12 App Consulting Services sessions dependent on his spend on Azure Services.

List prices are $300/month for Standard and $1,000/month for Professional Direct Support (http://bit.ly/1rHFmY4) and Microsoft say that the upgraded support will be enabled automatically by September 2016.

You can find the fine print on this offer and a description of App Consulting Services here: http://bit.ly/1TBVG5k.