Tag Archives: May 2025

Windows Server virtualization licensing guidance document

There’s an updated (May 2025) Windows Server virtualization licensing document from Microsoft. There aren’t major changes from the previous version – the most significant one is the removal of all the (quite useful) diagrams. In addition, the original errors remain – the requirement for a customer to have a minimum of 16 Windows Server Core licences when licensing by virtual machine was removed in April 2023.

However, keep your Microsoft documentation stash complete by grabbing this document here: https://bit.ly/44doWLJ.

Microsoft 365 Enterprise licensing guidance document

There’s an updated (May 2025) Microsoft 365 Enterprise licensing guidance document from Microsoft. There aren’t major changes to the content – and that’s a shame. When it was last updated in February 2024, we highlighted the fact that there were too many errors and chunks of out-of-date information. As time has gone on, the information is even more out-of-date and, yes, there are more errors.

For those of us who nevertheless like a complete set of Microsoft’s documentation, find this guide here: https://bit.ly/4kFhwGG.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (May 2025) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide. The major changes are the addition of a whole host of security roles for the ERP products, and clarification as to when administrators need to be licensed. Text on page 3 confirms that users with the Power Platform Administrator or Dynamics 365 Administrator role in Entra don’t require a licence, and the System Administrator role in Dataverse and Finance and Operations doesn’t require a licence to configure and administer Dynamics 365 applications.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/44lAhtU.

Power Platform Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (May 2025) Power Platform Licensing Guide with two main changes. Firstly, there’s the addition of Dataverse built-in and self-service Disaster Recovery options on page 32, and secondly there’s a new table on page 27 showing the consumption rates of AI Builder capabilities when used in Copilot Studio Agents.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/42Ys24q.

Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents

There are updated (May 2025) Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents with some small changes getting everything up to date: adding Microsoft 365 Business Premium as an eligible prerequisite for Microsoft 365 E5 Security, for example.

These useful documents tell you which of the (many) different components are included in which Office 365/Microsoft 365 plan, and there’s a table for SMB customers (https://bit.ly/434vH29), one for Enterprise customers (https://bit.ly/3F5GCzh), and one for Education customers (https://bit.ly/4muUpQX), and still more for specialist US customers – one for GCC (https://bit.ly/437WyJe), one for GCC High (https://bit.ly/4kgHD6C) and the final one for DoD (https://bit.ly/3YJxpTY).

And, if you’re a partner, we do have an April 2025 Excel version of these files. Drop us an email on info@licensingschool.co.uk from your work email address and we’ll send it on.

Qualified Devices and Qualified Users licensing guidance

There’s an updated (May 2025) Qualified Devices and Qualified Users licensing guidance document from Microsoft. There are just tiny changes from the previous 2020 version, with all the rules and definitions staying the same.

Find this updated document here: https://bit.ly/3YvbT5e.

Flexible Virtualization Benefit licensing guidance

There’s an updated (May 2025) Flexible Virtualization Benefit licensing guidance document from Microsoft. There aren’t huge wording changes from the previous (November 2022) version – just some rewording here and there, but all diagrams and the resources section have been removed.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/4jGr4ko.

Dragon Copilot

Microsoft announce that Dragon Copilot is available in the US from May 1, 2025 and will be available in Canada on June 1, 2025, with the exception of the province of Quebec. It’ll then come to the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Quebec in the months after that. It’s also added to the May 2025 Product Terms (https://bit.ly/3GCH48E) where we see there’s a Dragon Copilot User licence and a Dragon Copilot Flex User licence.

There’s a new licensing guidance document which explains all – the regular licence gives you access to all services as well as ambient and GenAI features, and the Flex licence gives you access to core features with the ambient and GenAI features billed on a consumption basis.

You can find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3Ez36IQ, and the licensing guidance document here: https://bit.ly/4cYNpqP.

Azure AD External Identities end of sale

1 May 2025 marks the end of sale for new customers of Azure AD External Identities Plan 2 and Azure AD B2C – Microsoft Entra External ID is Microsoft’s latest Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solution for managing identity, authentication and authorisation of external users.

This site gives information about required actions for existing customers of the older solutions (https://bit.ly/42E3i1d), and there’s a useful FAQ here: https://bit.ly/4jNr2Yl.

Purview Pay-As-You-Go meters

Microsoft introduce new Pay-As-You-Go meters for Purview to help customers effectively secure and govern data as it moves into and through AI apps and agents. The meters are available from 1 May, 2025 and billed, as usual, through an Azure Subscription. If you don’t have an Azure Subscription linked to your tenant on 30 June, 2025, then these metered capabilities will stop working.

Find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/42U3HwH.