Grace period for Azure Reservation exchanges

Microsoft announced in October 2022 that Azure compute Reservations purchased on or after 1 January, 2024 would no longer be able to be exchanged. Then, in October 2023, they announced that there would be a grace period giving customers until at least 1 July, 2024 to exchange their Reservations for Azure Dedicated Host, Azure App Services, and Reserved Instances. The latest announcement in May 2024 states that the grace period is now extended until further notice.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4bPH4gl, and a useful article with some example scenarios here: https://bit.ly/3MdGC0m.

Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premises Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (January 2024) Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premises Licensing Guide. There aren’t major updates, just a few changes to the Configuration Components section on page 8.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3UqiTOW

Exchange Server 2019 CUs and end of Mainstream Support

Exchange Server 2019 reached end of Mainstream Support on 9 January, 2024 which means that you wouldn’t normally expect any non-security updates to be released after that date. However, there are still two more Cumulative Updates planned – find out more from the Exchange Team here: https://bit.ly/3On7goF,

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guides

The Dynamics team do a great job of keeping their Licensing Guides up-to-date. Read on for the news about the changes and additions over the last few months.

November 2023 Licensing Guide

  • Removal of the 1-year licences for the Fraud Protection offerings

December 2023 Licensing Guide

  • The Field Service User SL now includes access to Dynamics 365 Guides and Remote Assist
  • The Field Service Contractor User SL is added to page 16, and you can find out more on our blog: https://bit.ly/4biwD4L

January 2024 Licensing Guide

  • The Finance Premium User SL is added to pages 18 and 19, and you can find out more on our blog: https://bit.ly/4birM3Q
  • The Operations Database capacity that is accrued for each individual Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce and Project Operations User SL is increased from 1.5 GB to 4 GB – see page 38
  • There’s a new option to purchase Dataverse / Operations Additional Database Capacity in increments of 1 TB – see page 40
  • Power Virtual Agents is replaced throughout by Copilot Studio, and you can find out more on our blog: https://bit.ly/3Uie6zq

Dynamics 365 Field Service Contractor User SL

Microsoft add the newly available Dynamics 365 Field Service Contractor User SL to the January 2024 Product Terms. This $50 per user per month licence is designed to complement the existing $95 per user per month Field Service licence to manage third-party technicians. Note that you can’t buy the Contractor licence without having at least one of the regular Field Service licences.

This page is useful to see which features are included in which licence: https://bit.ly/3HB1XOM.

Dynamics 365 Finance Premium

Microsoft add the newly available Dynamics 365 Finance Premium User SL to the January 2024 Product Terms. This $300 per user per month licence equips users with tools to build advanced financial plans, budgets, analytics, and insights, and includes all the functionality available in the existing $180 per user per month Finance User SL. From a purchasing perspective it’s available through the EA/MPSA/CSP and EES agreements and there’s a minimum purchase requirement of 20 licences which can be combined across Finance and Finance Premium. This new licence also includes 200 electronic invoice and invoice capture transactions per tenant per month, as well as 50,000 AI Builder credits.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/42iIE6s, and an overview of the different capabilities between the Finance licences here: https://bit.ly/3HzLASp.