Category Archives: Uncategorized

RPA Licensing Brief

Microsoft launched their Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capability in April, 2020. As a reminder, RPA helps users to automate tasks by recording actions to be played back later, either with human interaction (known as “attended”) or without (“unattended”). if you want to find out more about this capability, then there’s a new (April 2020) Licensing Brief which directs you to RPA documentation and resources, and includes a number of FAQs with a full section dedicated to licensing and pricing questions.

Find this Licensing Brief here: https://bit.ly/RPVPowAutApr2020

Control Azure spending and manage bills: Microsoft Learn course

If you want to increase your knowledge around Azure Cost Management then there’s a new Learning Path in Microsoft Learn. Snazzily entitled “Control Azure spending and manage bills with Azure Cost Management + Billing” it consists of three modules: Design for efficiency and operations in Azure, Predict costs and optimize spending for Azure, and Analyze costs and create budgets with Azure Cost Management.

Find this free Learning Path here: https://bit.ly/2ylYh3j.

Microsoft 365 E3 – Unattended licence

Microsoft announce a new flavour of Microsoft 365 E3 – one that you can assign to a Bot to run repetitive tasks without user intervention.

The May 2020 Online Services Terms gives the low-down on the licensing: the Bot may use the suite in a physical or virtual machine including Windows Virtual Desktop, licence reassignment follows the same rules as if the Bot were a (real) user, and it’s an (illegal) multiplexing scenario if the Bot carries out activities on behalf of an unlicensed user or device.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3d9zqhW, and get the current Online Services Terms here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.

Azure Cost Management: preventing unexpected charges

If you want a good overview of how you can prevent unexpected charges for the Azure services then this article has some useful information: https://bit.ly/2WiZcte. It’s a 12 minute read with the following sections: getting estimated costs, monitoring costs, optimising and reducing costs, and analysing unexpected charges.

Azure Cost Management: enhanced budget capabilities

Microsoft announce that budget evaluations in Azure Cost Management now include Reservations and Marketplace purchases rather than just usage information.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/2KWjqDW, some examples on how you might implement the new features here: https://bit.ly/2WgjUtO, and a tutorial on creating budgets here: https://bit.ly/2Whw8lU.

Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection

Originally called Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection and known mainly as being the difference between Windows 10 Enterprise E3 and E5, Microsoft Defender ATP is now ready (from a licensing perspective) to provide an Endpoint Protection Platform for both client and server devices. If you’re new to Microsoft Defender ATP then this is a good overview video (https://bit.ly/2ynwvmP) to give you a flavour of the protection, detection and response capabilities.

And so to the licensing, starting with client devices. Microsoft Defender ATP is still included in Windows 10 Enterprise E5, the Windows 10 Enterprise E3 to E5 Step-up licence, as well as Microsoft 365 E5 Security, and Microsoft 365 E5 User SLs. What’s more recent is that there’s now also a standalone User SL available which can be purchased to protect Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 Pro devices, as well as Mac devices. It’s available in the EA and through CSP, and covers the licensed user for up to 5 devices for about $5 per user per month.

From a server perspective, there’s another new licence – MDATP for Servers – which protects a server VM for, again, about $5 per VM per month. Customers wishing to buy this licence to protect servers must meet some minimum requirements first – they must have a minimum of 50 client MDATP licences, which can be any combination of the licences mentioned above. Microsoft recommend MDATP for Servers as a solution likely to appeal to customers with on-premises virtual machines, and continue to recommend Azure Security Center Standard as the preferred solution for VMs running in Azure. This is around $15 per VM per month and includes all of the Microsoft Defender ATP capability as well as a whole host of additional Azure services.

The May 2020 Product Terms has the relevant licensing rules if you want to check them out on pages 46 (client) and 75 (server). Get the latest Product Terms documents here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.

Microsoft 365 Compliance changes

Microsoft 365 Compliance has been a cost-effective way of acquiring Office 365 Advanced Compliance and Azure Information Protection Premium Plan 2 at a cost of $10 per user per month, but from 1 April, 2020 there are changes.

The two Microsoft 365 Compliance components (themselves collections of services) are retired, and replaced with three “mini suites” which repackage the existing Compliance offerings into different groups and add some new functionality too. The three new mini suites are: eDiscovery and Audit, Information Protection and Governance, and Insider Risk Management, priced at $7 per user per month for Information Protection and Governance and $6 per user per month for the other two. Microsoft 365 Compliance remains the way to access the services of all three mini suites at $10 per user per month.

These suites can be added on to a Microsoft 365 E3 licence (as you would perhaps expect), but also to a whole host of other licences, and page 60 of the April 2020 Product Terms document lists the various prerequisites.

The compliance offerings are typically tenant-level services and the licensing guidance for tenant-level services is updated here: https://bit.ly/35gbdUv where you’ll also find a useful Compliance Licensing Comparison document detailing which services are licensed by which EMS, Office 365 or Microsoft 365 plan. This document is available as a PDF document (https://bit.ly/3aoaQbc) or Excel file (https://bit.ly/2zCCK6C).

Azure DevOps Services billing FAQs

If you’ve got a question about how the Azure DevOps Services are billed then this FAQ is worth a read: https://bit.ly/2RvUDKt. There’s also a section on multi-organisation billing which was recently announced here: https://bit.ly/2yNdPwM, and enables businesses with more than one Azure DevOps organisation to pay for each user once for all organisations under the same billing Azure Subscription.