Licensing changes for hosted solutions

Microsoft announce some upcoming licensing changes for hosted solutions. These will allow partners to offer more solutions (notably hosted desktop solutions comprised of Windows and Office), and will allow customers more flexibility in where they use their existing licences.

This increased flexibility will come via changes to Software Assurance which will expand to allow customers to use their Windows, Office and Windows Server licences with any Cloud Provider partner on dedicated or multi-tenant hardware.

There’s no word yet on when exactly these changes will be implemented, but in the interim you can read the (very long) blog post here: https://bit.ly/3lkgvqD.

Microsoft productivity servers: the future

Microsoft announce that the next versions of Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Skype for Business Server, and Project Server will be available in the second half of 2021.

What will be different is that they will only be available with the purchase of a subscription licence which will entitle organisations to support, product updates, and security patches.

There will also be a new perpetual release of Office for Windows and Mac in the same timeframe.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3j8SrEy.

Office software Licensing Brief

There’s an updated (April 2020) Office software licensing brief. The main changes are to update for the changes to the licensing terms for Outsourcing Software Management in October 2019, and to remove references to Office Home & Student 2013 RT.