Product List and PUR Combined

There’s big Volume Licensing news this 1st of July – the Product List and the Product Use Rights (PUR) documents are combined into one document called the Product Terms, which will be updated monthly.

There’s an FAQ on this new document here: http://bit.ly/1RS3gFP and an overview video towards the bottom of this page, where you can also download the document: http://bit.ly/MSvlterms.

We’ll do a more detailed blog post soon highlighting some of the important changes.

Overview of the Changes to the July 2014 Volume Licensing Product Use Rights

There’s no one particular product that stands out this month for grabbing the lion’s share of the changes – they’re distributed over several products, so I’ve taken the liberty of listing them here in the order that I personally find them most interesting – it’s a perk of the job you know!

Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard and Datacenter – pages 25/27

  • Office 365 E3 and E4 (A3/A4 and G3/G4 too) lose the rights to access Rights Management Services in Windows Server
  • The Enterprise Mobility Suite USL is added as a qualifying CAL for this service

Project Server – page 35

  • It’s confirmed that a Project Lite USL is included as a qualifying CAL for Project Server

SQL 2014 Enterprise Server – page 37

  • That jolly useful section that detailed the idiosyncrasies of this licence has been removed and you’re now directed to the April 2014 PUR

Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Store Server – pages 33/34

  • This is a new kid on the block for August 2014. It’s licensed with the Server/CAL model and the CALs are the same as those used with the AX 2012 R3 Server product

Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Standard Commerce Server Core – pages 43/44

  • Best friends with the new Store Server licence above, this licence joins the select family of Core licences where the licensing rules that you’re familiar with apply
  • The Retail and eCommerce Licensing Guide from Microsoft show how these products are used together to license various key scenarios: http://bit.ly/1oiTFgF

Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 – page 31

  • Normally, a Forefront product would (frankly) be guaranteed bottom place on my list for interest, but I do think it’s interesting that certain new USLs have been added to FIM’s list of qualifying CALs. It seems like the Enterprise Mobility Suite is the new golden child of Microsoft licensing since that makes the list, as does the Microsoft Azure Active Directory Premium USL

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 – page 38

  • This product now includes rights to SQL Server 2014
  • Another CAL exception is added to the list as it’s confirmed that a CAL is not required when Visual Studio Team Foundation Server is accessed through a pooled connection from another integrated application or service

Office 365 E3 for Nonprofits USLs – page 32 for example

  • The list of qualifying CALs for the server products are updated to include the E3 SKU for Nonprofits. So, for example, it’s confirmed that this USL gives access to the functionality allowed by the Lync Standard and Enterprise CALs

Overview of the Changes to the April 2014 Volume Licensing Product Use Rights

Unsurprisingly, it’s SQL Server that grabs the headlines in the April 2014 PUR, so let’s start with a summary of what’s updated for this product:

  • The 2012 Standard, BI and Enterprise editions are all updated to their 2014 equivalents and there are just two changes to the licensing – see the next two bullet points
    • Licensing a passive fail-over server is now an SA benefit. The details are on page 72 and confirm that if you’re licensed with the Server/CAL model you do need SA on your CALs too, and if you’ve moved your licences to a third party shared server under Licence Mobility rights then you don’t get these fail-over server rights
    • There’s a new CAL waiver for batch jobs for the BI edition on page 27, and just for completeness you should note that these rights also apply to the BI 2012 version of the product – see page 27 of the May 2014 Product List
  • There’s a useful new section added for SQL Server 2014 Enterprise edition when it’s licensed with the Server/CAL model. It confirms the following key facts all in one place on page 37:
    • This edition is only available under SA renewal
    • It may only access 20 physical cores
    • Each licence permits the running of SQL in 4 VOSES and licences may be stacked to allow SQL to run in additional VOSES
    • Down-edition rights are to BI, Standard, Workgroup or Small Business editions, and the 20 core limitation is removed when BI is installed
    • Licence Mobility is available with active SA
    • The Power BI for Office 365 USL can’t be used as an alternative to a SQL CAL to access the server

There are a couple of changes to the Windows family, where the licensing rules for Windows client and his first cousin Windows Embedded get ever closer:

  • Firstly, page 10 confirms that if you’ve got active SA on your Windows 8.1 Enterprise/Industry Enterprise licences then you can move both the licence AND the SA to a replacement device
  • The SA benefits for both flavours of Windows are now much more similar and so the sections have been combined in the Software Assurance Appendix on page 73. Notably, Windows Industry Enterprise SA gains VDA rights

There are a couple of other updates:

  • AX 2012 R2 is updated for R3 with the only significant change being that, like SQL 2014, its fail-over server rights move to being an SA benefit – see page 67
  • BizTalk 2013 is updated for R2 so it looks like we can expect to see that product in June then 😉

There’s some clarification added to the Disaster Recovery Rights SA benefit – formerly known as Cold Backup Server Rights:

  • There’s confirmation added on page 68 that a Windows Server licence is not required for the Disaster Recovery server as long as certain (listed) conditions are met
  • And a statement is added on page 69 stipulating that the Disaster Recovery server may not be used as a production server

And finally we say a few goodbyes:

  • Lync Online Plan 3 is at last removed
  • System Center Advisor is also removed as this is no longer an SA benefit, but became a free service way back in January 2013
  • And Data Protection Manager 2010 for System Center Essentials also slips quietly away

Microsoft detail their strategy for the Online Services Use Rights document

If you’ve looked at the January 2014 Product Use Rights document then you could be wondering where you now find information on products such as Yammer or Windows Intune or Office 365. The Online Services Use Rights (OLSUR) document of course. Microsoft have now consolidated all the use rights for the Online Services into this document, and they give you a high level overview of their strategy in this article: http://bit.ly/1d1lzmo.

For a more detailed insight into what you can find in this document look out for a future blog post from us.

Overview of the Changes to the October 2013 Product Use Rights Document

If, like me, you were watching for the calendar to tick over to the first of the quarter to see what would be new in the October 2013 PUR, then you may be disappointed in the changes that I’m about to detail. If you’re a slightly more well-balanced person, you’ll be relieved, as there are no major licensing changes revealed to get your head around.

I’ve decided to limit this blog post to the changes that affect us in October 2013 – there are some more changes that will make sense when Microsoft make announcements over the coming months and we’ll tackle those bits and pieces then.

The products that are added and deleted are very much what you’d imagine. We bid a final farewell to System Center Essentials 2010 and TechNet, while Windows 8 goes to 8.1, and System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2012 go to the new R2 versions with no changes to the licensing detailed. There’s more that’s changed on the CRM front simply because there’s a slightly different set of licences, and you’ll find updated sections both for the on-premise CRM Server 2013 and the new CRM Online offerings.

And then there are a few little bits and bobs that tidy up some loose ends. In particular, there’s confirmation that:

  • Users licensed with an Office 365 ProPlus USL may activate Microsoft Office Mobile on up to 5 smartphones (page 82)
  • External users invited to Yammer via external network functionality don’t need USLs (page 93)
  • Users licensed for Exchange Online Archiving for Exchange Server that have Exchange Standard CALs may access Exchange Server 2013 Enterprise CAL features to support the use of Exchange Online Archiving for Exchange Server (page 72)
  • There are a couple more use scenarios detailed for when a CAL is not required for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 (page 42)

And for this month, that’s about it!