Author Archives: licensingschool

Office 365 plans in the MPSA

E5 is the new Office 365 plan which arrived in December 2015 and it’s available through commercial and government Volume Licensing programs. This includes the MPSA – but what product pool is it in? Servers? Applications? Half and half? The December 2015 Product Terms is updated to remove the ambiguity around this question and you can see it’s the Applications pool on page 58.

Product Pools

CRM Online Licensing Guide

The CRM 2016 refresh happened at the end of November 2015 and that means that we have a new December 2015 Licensing Guide for CRM Online. Here’s a summary of the changes:

  • Inclusion of the new Employee Self-Service USL: this is the fifth CRM Online USL with the lowest level of access, aimed at users who need to do basic tasks such as read Knowledgebase articles and submit cases (page 8)
  • Inclusion of the CRM Online Professional Add-on to Office 365: this offers access to the CRM Online Professional set of capabilities for users who are already licensed with Office 365 E3, E4, E5, Business Premium or ECS (page 8). There’s also a “For SA” flavour of the Add-on for users who have the on-premises CRM Professional CAL with SA (page 26)
  • Removal of EA transitions for customers with on-premises CRM licences: the recommendation is now to purchase the relevant For SA Add-on (page 27)
  • Inclusion of Mobile Marketing: this new capability enables organisations to deliver marketing messages to their customers via SMS and is licensed through an Add-on to CRM Online Enterprise or Dynamics Marketing Enterprise (pages 11 and 17)
  • Inclusion of Interactive Service Hub: this facility is aimed at users in customer service roles helping them to pull together all customer interactions, and access is included in the CRM Online Basic and higher USLs and CRM Server 2016 Basic and Professional CALs (page12)
  • There’s also a note about the recent acquisitions of FieldOne, Adxstudio, and Fantasy Sales Team (FST) and the fact that their capabilities are not available through Volume Licensing agreements at the moment (page 12)

 

You can find this guide in the Dynamics section of our Licensing Guides emporium: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides.

System Center 2016 Licensing Guide

There’s a new System Center 2016 Licensing Guide from Microsoft.

It confirms that the licensing model will be the same as Windows Server 2016, so it’s gone to Core licensing with a minimum of 8 Core licences for each physical processor and a minimum of 16 Core licences for each server.

Read the guide to find out comparative pricing information and what organisations should do at SA renewal when they come to convert from Processor to Core licences.

You can find it here amongst the other Microsoft Licensing Guides we’ve gathered together: http://bit.ly/1RBEc9q.

Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 Pricing and Licensing FAQ

There’s a December 2015 Pricing and Licensing FAQ for Windows Server and System Center which gives some more detail on the upcoming 2016 versions of these products. Here are the new and interesting things revealed:

Windows Server

  • Windows Server 2016 is licensed by physical cores, therefore using hyper-threading does not change the Core licences required
  • If processors are disabled for use by Windows then the cores on that processor do not need to be licensed
  • Windows Server 2016 supports nested virtualisation – a VM running inside a VM – which counts as two virtual machines from a licensing perspective
  • There will be an External Connector licence for Windows Server 2016
  • Nano Server is a deployment option within Windows Server 2016 and requires no further licences

 

Azure hybrid-use benefit

  • Anticipated to be available in the first quarter of 2016
  • Customers with Windows Server with SA can use Windows Server images in non-Windows VMs in Azure
  • Each Windows Server 2012 R2 Processor licence allows customers to run 2 instances on up to 8 cores each, or 1 instance on up to 16 cores
  • When the benefit is used with a Standard edition licence, that licence may no longer be assigned to another server, but Datacenter licences can continue to be used for unlimited virtualisation in an on-premises deployment

 

System Center

  • System Center 2016 will also move to the Core licensing model
  • The Core Infrastructure Server Suite will also be licensed with Core licences

 

Find this jolly useful FAQ here: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides – look in the Core Infrastructure section.

Windows Server 2016 Licensing Datasheet

The licensing model for Windows Server will change to Core + CAL when the 2016 version launches in the second half of 2016, and there’s a new licensing datasheet which details the changes.

Here are the key points:

  • All physical cores in the server must be licensed
  • A minimum of 8 Core licences are required for each physical processor in the server
  • A minimum of 16 Core licences are required for servers with one processor
    Core licences will be sold in packs of two
  • SA customers will exchange Processor licences for Core licences at SA renewal
  • Processor licences will be exchanged for 16 Core licences or the actual number of physical cores in use
  • EA and SCE customers may continue to purchase Processor licences through the term of their agreement

Some things will stay the same:

  • Users or devices are licensed with CALs which may access multiple Windows Servers
  • Additional CALs are required for Remote Desktop Services or AD Rights Management Services
  • Standard edition provides rights for up to 2 OSEs and Datacenter edition licenses an unlimited number

Find the licensing datasheet in the Core Infrastructure section here: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides to read the detail and to see a useful table which compares pricing as the licensing model changes between Windows Server 2012 R2 and 2016.

Changes to Fail-over Rights

These rights are an SA benefit for Dynamics AX Server and SQL Server allowing customers to run passive fail-over instances of the product without additional licences.

Previously, the fail-over instances had to be on a separate OSE on the licensed server or on a different server dedicated to the customer’s use.

New wording added to the December 2015 Product Terms on page 82 confirms that this right is now extended to qualifying shared servers as part of the Licence Mobility through Software Assurance benefit.

E5 Arrives!

It’s December 1st and Office 365 E5 is added to the December 2015 Product Terms as expected. Page 58 tells us that there will be a full USL, an Add-on USL, and a From SA USL, with availability through the different Volume Licensing programs matching that of its best buddy E3.

If you’re not sure what’s in this brand new suite, then head over to the December 2015 Online Services Terms document where the table on page 26 has been updated to show the various components.

Many of these components are new (Office 365 Delve Analytics for example), and these are added to the Product Terms as standalone licences too.

Dynamics AX

Microsoft announce that the next release of Dynamics AX will be generally available in the first quarter of 2016.

It will be a cloud-based service and so will simply be known as Dynamics AX with no version or year attached to it. There are no details yet, but apparently we can expect “a new, simple and transparent subscription pricing model”.

Read the full announcement here: http://bit.ly/1Ih0pSB.

Microsoft Hosting and CSP Newsletter

The November 2015 Hosting and Cloud Service Provider newsletter is out. There are just two topics of licensing interest:

December 2015 sees a new format SPUR, and note that, due to recent edits, you should replace the preview version published in November with the final version available on 1 December 2015.

Secondly, Provisioning System will no longer be available through SPLA from 1 March 2016, and the use rights will be removed from the December 2015 SPUR.

Sign up for this free monthly newsletter here: http://bit.ly/1iVEvxV.

November 2015 Changes to Visual Studio Licensing

There are some changes to Visual Studio licensing for November 2015 – let’s take a look!

Firstly, Microsoft’s Brian Harry confirms that Visual Studio Online is now Visual Studio Team Services. Hurrah! I’ve long wanted this to happen so that this hosted service more closely matches its on-premises cousin’s name – Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.

This page is a useful resource on Visual Studio Team Services pricing (http://bit.ly/1PNQbks) with the following points of interest:

  • As many stakeholders as you want can be added to a Visual Studio Team Services account free of charge
  • The first 5 additional users that you add are free
  • Any users with active Visual Studio with MSDN subscriptions have free access
  • You can’t buy Visual Studio Team Services subscriptions through an Enterprise Agreement but you’re eligible for special pricing
  • All Visual Studio Team Services subscriptions include a Visual Studio Team Foundation Server CAL

Secondly, Visual Studio Cloud Subscriptions are now available enabling you to buy either monthly or annual subscriptions to Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise. Monthly subscriptions are $45/$250 and the annual ones $539/$2,999, and this page is useful for the details (http://bit.ly/1R6emKm).  It’s also worth knowing the following:

  • The Cloud Subscriptions can only be purchased through the Visual Studio Marketplace rather than through a Volume Licensing agreement
  • The full MSDN benefits are only available if you commit to an annual subscription

Brian Harry’s blog post is here (http://bit.ly/1NcIRg2) with a complete list of what’s new technically for Visual Studio and its friends in November 2015.