Tag Archives: Office 365

Bridge CALs Available in Open Value

From November 1st there are Bridge CALs available for Open Value customers.

When do you need a Bridge CAL? Well, if you’ve got an enterprise wide commitment to Office and a CAL Suite but want to transition to either EMS or Office 365 then you need a way to continue to pay for the on-premises components that haven’t transitioned – and that’s the Bridge CAL. They’ve been available in the Enterprise Agreement for a few years and now Open Value customers are able to buy them too.

See page 14 of the November 2015 Product Terms document.

Office 365ProPlus Update Branches

The feature updates for Office 365 ProPlus are managed in a similar (but not quite the same) way as for Windows 10.

There’s a Current Branch and Current Branch for Business, but no Long Term Servicing Branch – if you want a static version of Office then you’ll need to deploy Office Professional Plus 2016.

There is, however, a First Release for Current Branch for Business to give organisations a chance to evaluate the CBB build before deployment.

There are some good explanations and diagrams in this TechNet article – it’s definitely worth a look: http://bit.ly/1Ov0l8Q.

Home Use Program FAQs

The Home Use Program FAQ site is updated for Office 2016.

Of note:

  • if you have Office 2013 HUP you must uninstall before installing Office 2016, and
  • you can’t install Office Professional Plus 2016 if you have Office 365 (including the trial) installed.

Find the full FAQ here: http://bit.ly/1GCAXWM.

October 2015 Volume Licensing Briefs

There are two updated Volume Licensing Briefs for October 2015: “Licensing Office 365 ProPlus in VL” and “Licensing Microsoft Office Software in VL”.

There are no major changes, the documents are just updated for the removal of the Office Multi Language Pack as an SA benefit – it’s now included with the licence, and the possibilities of Shared Computer Activation – including running Office 365 ProPlus in Azure.

Get the briefs here: http://bit.ly/MSvlbriefs.

Project 2016 Availability Announced

Microsoft announce availability of Project 2016 (30 Sept 2015).

What exactly is “Project 2016” though? Well, this Microsoft article (http://bit.ly/1WA5wFN) explains that there are updates to Project Professional (the traditional device-licensed client), Project Pro for Office 365 (its user-licensed counterpart) and Project Online (the hosted Enterprise Project Management solution), but that we’ll have to wait for equivalent features for on-premises EPM with the launch of Project Server 2016 in the spring of 2016.

The article is worth a look to get an idea of the sort of features being added.

Office 365 Import Service

The Office 365 Import Service is in preview. Essentially, this service is used to move PST files to Office 365 mailboxes and/or to import data files to SharePoint Online. Customers use the preparation tool to get their content ready and then can choose to upload data over the network or, for large amounts of data, to copy it to hard drives and ship them to Microsoft.

The service is free at the moment but will turn into a chargeable Office 365 service later. See the announcement here: http://bit.ly/1LXn0EH or this TechNet article for more details: http://bit.ly/1MUooOi.

Licensing Office with RemoteApp

If you want to share Office applications from the cloud then there’s a good article from Microsoft that explains how you need to license this scenario.

Essentially you need an Office 365 ProPlus subscription and an Azure RemoteApp USL – note that a traditional Office Professional Plus 2016 licence isn’t an option.

The article also covers notions such as shared computer activation, Visio and Project, and an overview of how you get started with Office 365 and Azure RemoteApp. It’s definitely worth a read – find it here: http://bit.ly/1MpF6lB.

September 2015 MPSA Changes

Microsoft announce that there are two big updates for the MPSA from 1st September 2015, with the addition of:

  • Enterprise Cloud Suite (ECS)
  • Multi-year subscriptions for Online Services

ECS was previously only available via the Enterprise Agreement (EA) and includes Office 365 E3, the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) and Windows per User, as well as a number of other services– see more info here http://bit.ly/13umyz1.

The second addition enables MPSA customers to order one, two, or three-year subscriptions for certain Online Services with price protection for all incremental orders.

The Microsoft WWLP blog post is here http://bit.ly/1F9uB61

Extension to RDS rights date

Native RDS support for Office 365 ProPlus arrived in September 2014 meaning that Office 365 ProPlus could be installed in an RDS environment – previously, customers were given a right to use corresponding Office 2013 Volume Licensing media to make this work.

In September, customers were given until 31 August 2015 to make the change to the Office 365 ProPlus software, but page 57 of the August 2015 Product Terms document extends this date to 31 March 2016.

Microsoft Sway General Availability

General Availability is announced for Sway, the Microsoft digital storytelling app. It’s available to customers with an Office 365 plan that includes Office Online, Office 365 Business, or Office 365 ProPlus, although some Office 365 plans that are no longer in market will apparently not give access to Sway.

See some examples of “Sways” and find full details here: http://bit.ly/1DuJAGP.