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.
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.
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.
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.
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.