With the upcoming release of SQL Server 2025, there will not be a new version of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Instead, Power BI Report Server will be the default – offering new features including PBIX reports, data modelling, and custom visuals.
The Microsoft announcement states that “when SQL Server 2025 becomes generally available, any customer with a paid SQL Server license will have access to Power BI Report Server (PBRS) ” while PBRS was previously limited to Enterprise edition customers with Software Assurance.
Power BI Report Server (PBIRS) installation requires keys from SQL Server 2025 and later versions. For SQL Server 2022 (16.x) and previous versions, access to PBIRS is limited to customers with SQL Server Enterprise edition and Software Assurance (SA), who can use a PBIRS key provided by Microsoft.
You don’t have to transition immediately if you don’t want to as SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) 2022 will continue to receive security updates and support through January 11, 2033.
The announcement (with other SQL 2025 info) is here and there is more info here too.
Microsoft announce new cloud options for Europe. There is an increasing push back from European organisations, particularly Government, against so many critical services and so much data all being run out of the US…this has been accelerated by the current geo-political situation too.
These announcements are Microsoft’s attempt to pre-emptively stem the flow of European customers away from their cloud services.
Altogether we’ve got:
Sovereign Public Cloud
Sovereign Private Cloud
National Partner Clouds
Microsoft 365 Local
Data Guardian
External Key Management
Regulated Environment Management
Microsoft 365 Local is interesting but the MS announcement only talks about productivity workloads like Exchange Server & SharePoint Server. Does M365 Local include Teams, Stream, ClipChamp, Planner etc.? 🤷♂️
Sovereign Public Cloud
Will be offered across all existing European datacentre regions, for all European customers, across enterprise services such as Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Security and Power Platform.
Customer data stays in Europe, under European Law, with operations and access controlled by European personnel, and encryption is under full control of customers.
Sovereign Private Cloud
Will support critical collaboration, communication and virtualization services workloads on Azure Local. This solution now integrates Microsoft 365 Local and the security platform with Azure Local, providing consistent capabilities for hybrid or air-gapped environments to meet resiliency and business continuity requirements
National Partner Clouds
Available in France (Bleu) & Germany (Delos Cloud), these will offer comprehensive capabilities of Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure in an independently owned and operated environment.
Microsoft 365 Local
Microsoft 365 Local provides customers with additional choice by bringing together Microsoft’s productivity server software into an Azure Local environment that can run entirely in a customer’s own datacentre.
This provides a simplified deployment and management framework for organizations to run Microsoft’s trusted productivity servers in environments they fully control. It remains to be seen exactly what is included and how the licensing works…
Data Guardian
Data Guardian will add an additional level of assurance by ensuring that only Microsoft personnel residing in Europe control remote access to these systems and adds additional human and technical oversight whenever engineers outside of Europe need access.
All remote access by Microsoft engineers to the systems that store and process your data in Europe is approved and monitored by European resident personnel in real time and will be logged in a tamper-evident ledger.
External Key Management
With external key management, customers can connect Azure to keys stored on their own Hardware Security Module (HSM) on-premises or hosted by a trusted third party.
Regulated Environment Management
The Regulated Environment Management service will allow customers to easily manage all these features in one place (for instance, configuring Data Guardian policies or reviewing access log entries).
It’s the Microsoft Product Terms for June 2025 and, as you’d expect in the last month of the FY, not too much has changed.
Clarification that it’s Cloud Add-ons to SA that must be acquired on the same agreement as the base license…rather than all SLs that have a pre-requisite license.
Azure App Service plan added to MCA.
Clarification that Entra ID Governance for External Identities may be used only for External Users. <– This seems like it’s closing a loophole that customers may have been using.
Copilot Studio added as a “covered product” to the Customer Copyright Commitment.
Added “hidden offer products” to MCA Availability tables – these seem to include:
M365 Cross-tenant User Data Migration
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management Add-on to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for Servers
Viva Glint
VDA Add-on for M365 E3/E5 USL
M365 Apps for Enterprise
Workplace Analytics
Numbers 2, 4, and 7 may not be available “in all sales channels and geos” and may also require “engaging with a Microsoft representative to place an order“.
A new Remote Network Bandwidth SKU has been added to the M365 section (this relates to Global Secure Access via Entra).
Microsoft Dragon Copilot has been added – this is a healthcare focused product from their Nuance acquisition.
Microsoft have announced 3-year subscription terms on CSP for:
1) Microsoft 365 E3 (with and without Teams)
2) Microsoft 365 E5 (with and without Teams)
3) Microsoft Teams Enterprise
4) Microsoft 365 E5 Security
5) Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance
Numbers 1, 2, and 3 will be available from June 1, 2025 while 4 & 5 will come on July 1, 2025.
The price will be the same as 3 x 12-month subscriptions but of course, with the price protection against increases that a longer commit brings. It seems there will be a 100 SKU minimum for these 3-year SKUs.
This strengthens the push for smaller EA customers to move across to CSP and comes hot on the heels of the “channel transfers interface” to that launched in April to help partners renew Enterprise Agreements (EAs) into CSP and retain their existing rights to bundled Teams.
Microsoft have also announced enhanced investment in, and incentives for, CSP partners moving into FY26 from July 1st.
Microsoft Purview is a suite of products focused on data security, governance, and compliance across the Microsoft portfolio.
Microsoft first introduced Pay As You Go (PAYG) aka Consumption SKUs for Purview in January 2025 and now, from May 1, 2025 there are a new set. These new SKUs are aimed at protecting “your data as it moves across networks and through GenAI applications“.
The * is to note that Audit Standard is included within “Microsoft first party applications such as Microsoft 365 applications, Fabric, and Microsoft first party AI apps like Microsoft 365 Copilot, Security Copilot or AI applications custom-built using Copilot Studio“.
New metric/acronym alert! The 10,000 events for Insider Risk Management are known as a “Data Security Processing Unit (DPSU)”.
I notice that, for “Data Security Investigations”, Microsoft say:
“Data Security Investigations is billed through two meters: 1) the Data Security Investigations non-AI processing and storage meter and 2) Security Compute Units.
The Data Security Investigations non-AI processing and storage meter allows customers to store data related to an investigation. Security Compute Units are used to measure the computational capacity needed to run the AI analysis within DSI.”
Security Compute Units (SCUs) were introduced with Microsoft Security Copilot. It seems now that certain Purview PAYG usage may also consume your SCUs – needing further planning and budget insights.
Hotpatching – the ability to install patch updates without needing to restart the server – has been available in Microsoft Azure for a while. It is now coming to on-premises Windows Server 2025 machines…for a fee.
This new capability requires connection to Azure Arc and is currently free in preview but, from July 1 2025, it will cost $1.50 per core per month. That’s over $100,000 per year for 100 x 64 core servers…
If you’ve enrolled into the Preview, make sure you unenroll by June 30th to avoid being charged!
Interestingly, it doesn’t remove reboots completely but reduces the number from 12 per year to 4.
Frontline Worker Use Rights have moved to the Universal Terms for Online Services from product specific pages
A new definition for “Frontline Worker License” has been introduced in the Glossary
“Frontline Worker License means a license for a Microsoft Product designated with an “F”, “FLW”, or “Frontline” as identified in the Product Conditions table of product specific terms, which are subject to the Eligibility to Assign Frontline Worker Licenses terms in the Universal License Terms for all Online Services.”
Added Windows 10 ESU Cloud Managed SKUs
Removed Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection and Fraud Protection Additional Capacity from Availability tables
Updated Windows 365 Frontline terms and grant Windows 365 access rights for Windows Cloud PC OS
Added Windows 365 Disaster Recovery Plus Add-on to Availability Table
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 