Tag Archives: Office 365

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.

CRM Pricing and Licensing Updates

Updates on CRM pricing and licensing: promotional pricing for buying CRM Online Professional, Office 365 E3 and PowerBI together is extended until the end of September 2015, after that CRM Online Professional will be available at a discount for Office 365 customers, and CRM Server 2015 is now certified for deployment on Azure if you have Software Assurance.

Read the full article here: bit.ly/1MlRntb.

Office 365 E5

Microsoft will release a new Office 365 plan called E5 before the end of 2015.

This suite will include cloud PBX and PSTN conferencing, Power BI Pro, Delve, and new advanced security features such as Data Loss Protection (DLP) and Advanced Threat Protection (ATP).

See the Microsoft announcement here: http://bit.ly/1K7I2SB.

Office available for Android phone

Microsoft announce the general availability of the new Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for Android phone – http://bit.ly/1JkxvWJ.

As usual, everyone gets access to the core features, while the premium features require a qualifying Office 365 subscription.

This page is useful for finding out exactly what the qualifying Office 365 plans are: http://bit.ly/1IAfQEP.

Overview of the Changes to the June 2015 Volume Licensing Product List

If you look at page 10 of the June 2015 Product List you’ll find that there are no changes listed for this month. So, we had to dig a bit deeper to find the (admittedly extraordinarily minor!) changes:

  • First of all, the Planning Services which used to include Lync Server and now include Skype for Business Server are indeed updated to be “Skype for Business and Exchange Deployment Planning Services (S&EDPS)” on page 68
  • Then there are some changes to the Microsoft Azure Services section on pages 41/42 with a slight amendment to the definition of “Consumption Rates” and the inclusion of MPSA as a qualifying agreement to set pricing for the Server pool and thus the Azure services in an EA
  • And finally, there’s wording added on page 58 for the purchase eligibility of the Office 365 From SA User SLs. This clarifies that EA customers who licensed Office 365 before 1 August 2014 may indeed also purchase From SA USLs at renewal for any additional Office 365 users that they added during their Enrolment term

MSDN Benefits

This is a nice article on 10 of the MSDN benefits including rights to deploy to Azure, perpetual use rights, Azure credit, Visual Studio Online, and Store and Office 365 Developer Accounts. Find it here: http://bit.ly/1LQ1Av2.

US Government Community Cloud

Government SKUs are available for the Enterprise Cloud Suite and Project/Visio for Office 365 in the May 2015 Product List. ECS is also available within the US Government Community Cloud program and the Product List is updated to show more clearly which services are available under this program – look out for a “UC” cell identifier.

If you want to know more about the GCC program and Office 365 features that are specific to this program, then this is a good resource: http://bit.ly/1JB3RsF.

Citrix Implementation Guide for Office 365

A useful Implementation Guide from Citrix for Office 365 with XenApp and XenDesktop detailing some best practices as well as a licensing section covering Shared Computer Activation.

Get the guide here: http://bit.ly/1a2dULE.