There’s an updated (January 2025) CAL Suite Bridges licensing guidance document from Microsoft. Bridge CALs were first introduced in 2011 to help Enterprise Agreement customers maintain their enterprise-wide commitment to the Core and Enterprise CAL Suites as they moved to the cloud. This document has an overview, some scenarios, as well as tables taken from the Product Terms for CAL/CML equivalencies and prerequisites.
Find this document here: https://bit.ly/3Ql8std.
There’s a new (January 2025) Subscription License Suites document. It’s a slightly modified version of what you’d find in the Product Terms to document what components are in which suites, but more usefully organised.
Find this document here: https://bit.ly/3PZEryW.
There’s a new (January 2025) licensing guidance document for Microsoft Defender. It’s an introductory-level document but might be useful to start you on the road to understand the licensing of Microsoft Defender for client and server endpoints.
Find this new guide here: https://bit.ly/3EgYtCy.
There’s a brand new (January 2025) Windows Server 2025 Licensing Guide. It’s very much based on its Windows Server 2022 predecessor with updates such as the removal of Nano Server and the addition of the Pay-As-You-Go licensing option.
Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/4jnwlha.
There’s an updated (January 2025) Viva feature comparison table which removes Viva Goals ahead of its retirement – see our blog: https://bit.ly/4gPf0fn for details, and get this updated document here: https://bit.ly/3PniYQn.
There’s an updated (January 2025) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide with just a couple of changes to the included capacity tables on pages 40 and 41. Firstly you’ll see the orientation has changed which makes them easier to read, and then a couple of missing products are added to the first table – the Contact Center SKUs and Sales/Customer Service Premium.
Find this updated Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/3ZYoRbz.
Microsoft announce that there’s a new member of the Fabric workload family – SQL databases. They consume the same Fabric Capacity Units as the other Fabric workloads, with storage and backups billed separately. However, you can use SQL database in Fabric for free until 1 January, 2025 when compute and data storage charges begin, with backup billing starting on 1 February, 2025.
Find the announcement with an overview of notable features here: https://bit.ly/3Z0iq7n.
Microsoft announce that from 27 January, 2025 any OneDrive user account that has been unlicensed for more than 93 days will be automatically archived, at which point the data will be only be viewable via admin tools. A OneDrive account becomes unlicensed when a licence is removed from a user or when a user is deleted.
Find more details in this useful Learn article: https://bit.ly/48pPY3a.
Microsoft announce that Power BI Premium capacity SKUs (the P-SKUs) will be retired in favour of Fabric capacity. New customers will not be able to purchase the P-SKUs after 1 July, 2024, but existing non-EA customers can renew their existing subscriptions until 1 January, 2025 and then (if required) purchase more capacity until the end of the subscription term, and EA customers can, of course, purchase/renew until the end of the EA term. There are no changes to either Power BI Pro or Power BI Premium Per User licensing.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3vLtBq4.