Tag Archives: February 2025

Free SQL offers in Azure

Microsoft expand their free SQL offers in Azure. Back in February 2025 they launched the free Azure SQL Database offer which allows you to create up to 10 General Purpose databases in each of your Azure Subscriptions with the first 100,000 vCore seconds, 32 GB of data, and 32 GB of backup storage free per month for the lifetime of the Subscription. The new offer launched in May 2025 is for one Azure SQL Managed Instance in each of your Azure Subscriptions and gives you 720 vCore hours of compute and 64 GB of storage every month for 12 months.

Find the Azure SQL Database offer announcement here: https://bit.ly/4mW016N, and the Azure SQL Managed Instance offer announcement here: https://bit.ly/4l4T4id.

Core CAL and Enterprise CAL Suites licensing guidance

There’s an updated (March 2025) Core CAL And Enterprise CAL Suites licensing guidance document from Microsoft. There are minimal changes from the February 2025 version and note that a couple of errors still remain in the table on page 3.

Find this document here: https://bit.ly/4iquFTa.

Office LTSC licensing guidance

There’s an updated (February 2025) Office LTSC licensing guidance document from Microsoft. It’s a bit of a strange update – features such as Windows To Go (retired by Microsoft in 2020) are still included, and there are some useful tables which have been removed. Be aware too, that there are some new errors sprinkled throughout.

Keep your licensing guidance document collection complete and grab this guide here: https://bit.ly/43TyyeM.

Step-up licenses licensing guidance

There’s an updated (February 2025) Step-up licenses licensing guidance document from Microsoft, with minimal changes, covering the way Step-up licenses work for on-premises software and Online Services in the traditional Volume Licensing agreements. Help yourself to this updated document here: https://bit.ly/41QlVhW.

Software reimaging rights licensing guidance

There’s an updated (February 2025) software reimaging rights licensing guidance document from Microsoft. There aren’t major changes – just a few version updates and references to VLSC changed to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

Grab this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/4bXLXVe.

Core CAL and Enterprise CAL Suites licensing guidance

There’s an updated (February 2025) Core CAL And Enterprise CAL Suites licensing guidance document from Microsoft.

There aren’t many changes from the previous (November 2020) version because, to be honest, not much has changed in the CAL Suites world. However, note that a couple of errors have been introduced into the table on page 3.

Find this document here: https://bit.ly/3FgONIK.

Microsoft Sustainability Manager licensing guidance

There’s a new (February 2025) Microsoft Sustainability Manager licensing guidance document from Microsoft. This is one of the Microsoft Cloud industry solutions and it’s licensed with an Essentials or Premium tenant license costing $4,000 or $12,000 per month respectively, and $0 Essentials or Premium User SLs.

The licensing guidance document has information on included Dataverse capacity, dependencies on other products, as well as an FAQ section, and you can find it here: https://bit.ly/3ECiNP3.

Power Platform Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (February 2025) Power Platform Licensing Guide with useful new tables on page 19. These give extra information on how messages are billed in Coplot Studio and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, in particular the new Tenant Graph grounding for messages.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/42IxZUQ.

Base and Additive CALs licensing guidance

There’s a new (February 2025) Base and Additive CALs licensing guidance document from Microsoft which is an evolution of the October 2020 Microsoft Server Base and Additive CALS Overview Licensing Brief document. It’s broadly the same information covered, but all the diagrams showing the layered structure of Base and Additive CALs are removed to be replaced with more comprehensive explanations and links to the Product Terms.

Find this new document here: https://bit.ly/4b5Lzn3.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (February 2025) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide with just one small change: there’s a link to the Outsourcing Software Management Licensing Brief added to the Dual Use Rights section on page 45.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/4jMma5R.