Microsoft announce that the centrally managed Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server is now generally available. This allows customers to assign eligible licences to their SQL Server resources in Azure at a whole Subscription or Billing Profile level rather than to individual resources, making it much easier to manage.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3MKf3MN, and the useful Learn documentation here: https://bit.ly/3Olhk2f.
When you purchase an Azure Reservation you choose a scope for it which defines where it may be used: within a specific Resource Group, a specific Subscription, or all Subscriptions. A Management Group is a group of Azure Subscriptions and Microsoft announce this as a new option for the scope of a Reservation.
Find the announcement on the public preview here: https://bit.ly/3iqyA5i and more information on Reservation scopes generally here: https://bit.ly/3ouf6AU.
Microsoft announce that special discounts are now available for Windows Virtual Desktop used within an Azure dev/test Subscription. Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/2K0C6Sg. There’s also language added to page 56 of the April 2020 Product Terms document detailing the use rights of Windows Virtual Desktop in dev/test environments. Find the Product Terms documents here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.
Azure Information Protection Plan 2 is being discontinued as a standalone offering. Page 6 of the April 2020 Product Terms document confirms that existing customers will continue to have access to the service for the term of their Subscription, and customers with true-up rights will continue to have the option to true-up for the term of their Enrolment. Find the Product Terms documents here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.
The set of features that make up Azure Cost Management is constantly evolving and the most recent innovations include the introduction of filtered budgets, the ability to save and share customised views, and more flexibility for creating and managing Subscriptions with the limit of 50 Subscriptions per EA Account increased to 200.
Find the latest news from the ACM team here: http://bit.ly/2moqboR.
There’s an updated (July 2019) Windows 7 and Office 2010 End of Support FAQ. Use it to answer questions such as: which programs are the Extended Security Updates available in (currently EA/EAS/EES, but CSP too by the end of 2019); who’s eligible for free ESUs (EA/EAS customers with active Windows E5 or Microsoft 365 E5/E5 Security subscriptions); and in which Windows environments is Office 365 ProPlus supported (it depends, see pages 12/13).
Find this document, as usual, here: http://bitly/MSLicensingGuides.
Microsoft announce that there will be some changes to the licensing and activation of the subscription-based Office clients such as Office 365 ProPlus.
Users will be able to install Office on a new device without being prompted to deactivate Office on another device when they reach the five-device limit, and will simply be signed out of Office on the device where Office has been least recently used.
These changes will start rolling out to customers from August, with exact timings dependent on which release channel a customer is using.
Find the full announcement here: http://bit.ly/2JZZctp.
Microsoft announce new licensing options for PowerApps and Flow which will take effect in October 2019. Customers will be able to license internal users for an individual PowerApps app at $10 per user per app per month, or for unlimited apps at $40 per user per month.
PowerApps Portals will be the way to create and license apps for external users and this service is now in public preview from 18 July, 2019: http://bit.ly/2Oq92cf. Authenticated users will be charged at $200 for 100 logins per month and anonymous users will be $100 for 100,000 web page views per month.
From a Flow perspective, customers will now be able to choose to license an individual user to create unlimited workflows and business processes at a cost of $15 per user per month. Alternatively, they can choose to license individual business processes for an unlimited number of users at a cost of $500 per business process per month for up to 5 active workflows.
The announcement article is here: http://bit.ly/2JZo3gY, and if you want to watch a session from the Inspire partner conference explaining all this, then you’ll find that here: http://bit.ly/2Y2Cp8L.
Microsoft Reservations are a way of pre-paying for certain Azure services to get the best possible pricing. The first Reservation from Microsoft was a Reserved Instance – a way of paying upfront for the compute part of a virtual machine – and Microsoft continues to extend what, and where, Reservations are available.
In February 2019, Microsoft announced that Reserved Instance discounts had been extended to apply both to Classic Virtual Machines and Cloud Services, and that Reserved Instances could be applied to Dev/Test Subscriptions acquired through an Enterprise Agreement or through Azure.com. Find that announcement here: http://bit.ly/2KEIVdP.
More recently, in April 2019, they announced that the Reservations family had grown to include two new members. Firstly,
SQL Data Warehouse Reserved Capacity allows customers to buy compute Data Warehouse Units (cDWU) with either 1-year or 3-year options for discounts of up to 65%. Reserved Capacity can be shared by multiple warehouses in the same region and there are exchange and cancel options available if business needs change. Secondly, there are new RedHat Enterprise Linux Software Plans where the rules are stricter in terms of exchanging and cancelling, but discounts of up to 18% are still available.
Find the announcement and get further details here: http://bit.ly/2Mzvq1D.
Microsoft announce that Office 365 for Mac is now available on the Mac App store, where users with an Office 365 subscription that includes the Office apps will be able to install the Mac versions of the Office products with a single click.
Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/2RAfNV6 Apple also make the announcement (https://apple.co/2WhsCY4) highlighting the further benefit that businesses will now be able to use the Apple Business Manager to easily distribute the apps to employees.