There’s an updated Volume Licensing Reference Guide from Microsoft which, as usual, you can find here: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.
What’s new? Well, the main changes are updates for the Enterprise Agreement minimums changing to 500 PCs/users and the ongoing retirement of Select Plus.
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.
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:
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.
There’s a new offer for MSDN subscribers who want to run dev and test workloads in Azure.
Essentially you set up an MSDN Dev/Test Subscription in your EA or MPSA and then you get special rates on certain services (such as virtual machines) and the usual EA/MPSA rates on other ones. Even better, it’s all managed through the usual Azure Enterprise Portal.
Note that this is completely unrelated to the Azure credit that MSDN subscribers also get, and if a customer doesn’t have an EA/MPSA then there is a similar MSDN Dev/Test offer on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Find full details here: http://bit.ly/1VDYthQ.
With the introduction of Online Services in the EA, customers were able to transition to Online Services from their on-premises licenses.
The term “transition” was a reserved word for situations where a customer, in effect, converted their SA licenses into Online Services USLs.
Customers were initially allowed to use special transition licences mid-way through a year which led to some extraordinarily tricky licensing scenarios, and then From SA USLs were introduced which could only be used at Anniversary, with Add-ons being used mid-way through a year – much simpler!
Transitions are now officially at the end of the line; the term was removed from the EA agreement last year, and now it’s gone from the February 2016 Product Terms too.
Microsoft announce that the minimum requirements for both the subscription and perpetual flavours of the Enterprise Agreement will go from 250 users/devices to 500 from 1st July 2016.
The recommendation for smaller customers is to buy through the MPSA or CSP, but existing customers CAN renew their EA by extending it for an additional 36-month term if they want to – even after 1st July.
Read the full Microsoft blog post here: http://bit.ly/1Klwhfg
If you need an overview of the EA then this Enterprise Agreement Program Guide might be just the ticket. Updated in April 2014 it includes licensing changes for Windows Enterprise, and covers Azure as well as the Server and Cloud Enrolment. There’s also advice on SA credit if you’re renewing SA from another agreement.
Download it here: http://bit.ly/1j8qQli.
Really rather good Microsoft webcast on Azure and its licensing. Useful takeaways:
This webcast was originally aimed at Enterprise customers in the US and the licensing portion starts at 13:49 but I’d recommend the whole thing if you want to get a handle on the positioning of Azure too. http://bit.ly/19lQ5uq
Want to know how paying for Azure in an EA works? I thought this graphic showed it well. Read the full “Licensing Windows Azure for the Enterprise” article here: http://bit.ly/1fmjEND
If you’re a customer thinking about renewing an Enterprise Agreement, then this article from Gartner may help you plan your approach: http://gtnr.it/1bQ1dmn