Tag Archives: Licensing Guides

APS Licensing Datasheet

Analytics Platform System

 

There’s a new (June 2016) Analytics Platform System Pricing and Licensing datasheet. What’s that in normal English? Well, this is the Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) appliance for data warehouse workloads which runs (keep with me here) SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse edition. Bear in mind that when you acquire one of these appliances it’s pre-built, but you still need to purchase licences for the different components.

This datasheet does a good job of explaining the different servers and when Windows Server, System Center and SQL Enterprise licences are required.

Find it here: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.

Dynamics AX Licensing Updates

Changes to Dynamics AX licensing: the May 2016 Licensing Guide confirms that a Standard Acceptance Testing Instance is now provided for the life of the tenant, rather than just three months – see page 9.

There are also details of exactly what Power BI licences will be included with Platform Update 1: the Enterprise SL will include a Power BI Pro licence, and all SLs will include the Power BI Embedded licence which means that all users will be able to access the Power BI reports embedded within the Dynamics AX application – also page 9.

Find the updated guide here: http://bit.ly/1WSj4jt.

Office 365 Licensing Guide

There’s a new (March 2016) Volume Licensing Brief for Office 365.

This document has useful tables showing you all the Office 365 plans and what’s included in each one, as well as availability in the different channels. Then there’s an overview of the four flavours of USL that customers can choose from:

  • Full USL (if you’re a new Online Services customer)
  • From SA USL (if you’re transitioning from existing on-premises products with SA)
  • Add-on USL (if you’ve got traditional licences and want to try the cloud), and a
  • Step Up USL (if you want to go to a higher plan).

Finally, there’s a useful table showing the technical dependencies of some of the Office 365 services.

Find this guide here: http://bit.ly/259poHI.

CRM Online Licensing Guide (Feb 2016)

There’s an updated (February 2016) CRM Online Licensing Guide.

There are some additions for working with Dynamics AX: users licensed with a Dynamics AX Enterprise USL have the right to read CRM Online application data (page 6), and users licensed with a CRM Online Professional or Enterprise USL may read AX application data (page 8).

There’s also a new Voice of the Customer section (page 13) explaining what this functionality provides, as well as the CRM Online USLs required to use different parts of it.

Finally, there’s clarity added to the Add-ons section stating which USLs are eligible to have Add-ons added on.

Get this guide from the Dynamics section of our Licensing Guides emporium: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides.

Microsoft Volume Licensing Newsletter – January 2016

The Microsoft VL Newsletter for January 2016 is released, with a focus on Windows 10.

There’s a reminder of the Windows 10 offerings available through Volume Licensing programs as well as links to the (very good) Licensing Guide, a useful Deployment Guide, and a Windows SA per User at-a-glance two-pager.

Read the archives and sign up for future issues here: http://bit.ly/1SPW0N8.

November 2015 Visual Studio Licensing Guide

There were some changes to Visual Studio licensing in November 2015 and the Licensing Guide is updated to reflect the two main changes: Visual Studio Online is renamed Visual Studio Team Services, and there are now monthly and annual subscriptions available for Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise – the guide does a good job of detailing which MSDN benefits you get with these new subscriptions.

Read our summary of the changes to the licensing here: http://wp.me/p3K5IZ-iF and download the new guide in the Developer Tools section of our Licensing Guides emporium here: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides.

CRM Server 2016 Licensing Guide

There’s a refreshed (December 2015) Licensing Guide for CRM Server 2016, so 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, and it’s included in this guide since it gives access to an on-premises CRM deployment too (page 9)
  • Inclusion of the CRM Online Professional Add-on to Office 365 USL for SA: 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 and the on-premises CRM Professional CAL with SA (page 19)
  • Removal of EA transitions for customers with on-premises CRM licences: the recommendation is now to purchase the relevant CRM Online For SA Add-on (page 20)
  • Extra detail about purchasing CRM 2016 under SPLA: there’s an overview of how SPLA deployments differ to an on-premises deployment and a list of available SALs (pages 16/17)
  • 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 Server 2016 Basic and Professional CALs (page 12)
  • 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.

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.

Volume Licensing Guide

There’s a July 2015 Volume Licensing Guide released by Microsoft giving a broad introduction to both program licensing and product licensing.

It covers agreements for commercial, government, nonprofit, and academic customers as well as those aimed at software and service partners.

There’s a nice table on page 19 comparing the commercial programs which is a useful summary. The product licensing section of the document isn’t updated for Windows 10 yet, but again is a good overview of how the licensing works for each product.

Get this guide here: http://bit.ly/1MMvySK.