Microsoft announce that Viva Goals will be retired on 31 December 2025 with no new feature development from 5 December 2024. Customers with existing licences may continue using Viva Goals until their licences expire or until 31 December 2025, whichever comes first.
You can find information about the retirement here: https://bit.ly/40ufuBL, including the reason for the retirement – there hasn’t been enough adoption to justify Microsoft’s further investment in the product.
Microsoft announce that they will retire Copilot GPT Builder starting 10th July, 2024. This means that users licensed with a Copilot Pro licence will no longer be able to create their own custom Copilot GPTs. All Copilot GPTs created by Microsoft or by customers will also be removed at this time. Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4bXhrdg.
Microsoft announce that Power BI Premium capacity SKUs (the P-SKUs) will be retired in favour of Fabric capacity. New customers will not be able to purchase the P-SKUs after 1 July, 2024, but existing non-EA customers can renew their existing subscriptions until 1 January, 2025 and then (if required) purchase more capacity until the end of the subscription term, and EA customers can, of course, purchase/renew until the end of the EA term. There are no changes to either Power BI Pro or Power BI Premium Per User licensing.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3vLtBq4.
Microsoft announce the retirement of the Visual Studio for Mac IDE, with end of support starting 31 August, 2024. Find the announcement and some suggested alternatives to using Visual Studio for Mac here: https://bit.ly/3Z4kdbe.
Microsoft announce that Kaizala will retire on 31 August, 2023. Unsurprisingly, the recommendation is for customers to move to Teams and all Kaizala Pro capabilities are already in Teams.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3RaB9YU, with useful links for customers who need to make the Kaizala to Teams transition.
Microsoft announce the retirement of SQL Server 2019 Big Data Clusters. Existing users will be fully supported on the platform through February 2025 with the software maintained through SQL Server cumulative updates until that time.
There’s advice for replacement and migration options for customers here: https://bit.ly/35Xiblt, and you can find the retirement announcement here: https://bit.ly/3sMVUjl.
Microsoft acquired Cloudyn in July 2017 and have spent the last four years integrating much of the Cloudyn capabilities into the Azure Cost Management tools. Cloudyn will now retire on 30 June, 2021.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3zF3g9Y.
If you want an overview of the Volume Licensing agreements available for government customers then you may find this new overview brochure useful.
It covers the agreements available for all sizes of government customers and is up-to-date with changes such as the retirement of the Open License Program announced recently.
Find this brochure here: https://bit.ly/3p5mlN0.
The May 2020 Product Terms is updated for the retirement of the Windows Thin PC SA benefit corresponding to the end of support for Windows 7. Find the relevant text on page 6 and download the latest Product Terms document here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.
At the end of February 2020 Microsoft announced that a number of certifications would retire at the end of June 2020, the 70-705 exam (Designing and Providing Microsoft Licensing Solutions to Large Organizations) amongst them. However, due to the disruption caused by the coronavirus, this retirement date has been moved to 31 January, 2021.
The original post (https://bit.ly/3a4cxun) explains that while the 70-705 exam is retiring it doesn’t expire as a valid qualification and so it’s worth continuing with plans to take the exam if you’ve been studying for it.
The second post (https://bit.ly/2xg6INe) gives practical guidance on how to schedule an online proctored exam, and what to do if exams are cancelled or you have exam vouchers that will expire in the short term.