Author: rich_gibbons

Microsoft Licensing, products, Cloud, and more!
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Microsoft Product Terms: March 2025


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Removed “without Microsoft’s prior written approval” from the clause preventing using MS service to mine crypto…I guess they realised they were never going to give anyone permission for this!

Changed the Use Rights for Azure Local software from:

“Customer may use the Azure Local software only (i) on servers dedicated to Customer’s internal use“

to

“Customer may use the Azure Local software only (i) on devices dedicated to Customer’s internal use“

Microsoft say this represents a move to “include smaller, more affordable devices than traditional servers“

They also removed the following clause “Any customer support for Azure Local that may be available from Microsoft requires that Azure Local runs on server hardware that is pre-validated and listed in the Azure Local catalog or any successor.”

Added Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat to the list of EU Data Boundary Services

March 5th

You can now add the Microsoft 365 E5 Security add-on to the Business Premium SKU.

March 12th

Added a section on Data Handling of Query Data with M365 Copilot & M365 Copilot Chat:

  • Microsoft has no rights in Query Data other than as needed to provide the services,
  • Query Data is not used to improve Bing,
  • Query Data is not used to create advertising profiles or track user behavior,
  • Query Data is not shared with advertisers or otherwise beyond Microsoft and its contracted suppliers who are subject to terms no less protective than these provisions,
  • Query Data is not used to train generative AI foundation models, and
  • Query Data is treated as Customer confidential information and protected by appropriate technical and organizational measures.

Clarification that certain concurrent use rights for Defender on up to 5 devices does not include Server OSEs:

  • Eligible Licensed Users may use Microsoft Defender for Business on up to five concurrent devices. Customer may not use a Microsoft Defender for Business User SL with server OSEs.
  • Eligible Licensed Users may use Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management or Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management Add-on on up to five concurrent devices. Customer may not use Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management or Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management Add-On User SLs with server OSEs.
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Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat


Microsoft have launched a new addition to the Copilot family, confusingly called Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat.

Copilot Chat was already a thing (that is different to Copilot Biz Chat) and this seems to be a re-positioning as they add some new capabilities too. It is a basic, entry point tool that sits below Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is free and has access to internet info to give “web-grounded” responses. Additionally it can interact with Agents (more on that later) and also has elements of the “Copilot Control System” to help with corporate data privacy.

The table below shows how it stacks up against the “full” Microsoft 365 Copilot product:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2025/01/15/copilot-for-all-introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-chat/?msockid=1c5969e97aa36c313d327b0f7b586d33

One of the new additions is that users of this free product can use 2 types of agents on a Pay As You Go (PAYG) basis, they are:

  • “Tenant Graph” grounded agents
  • Autonomous action agents

“Tenant Graph” grounded means agents that can access internal company data as well as internet information, giving answers with additional, organisation specific info and context. This is an additional PAYG per-message cost for M365 Copilot Chat users but is included within the M365 Copilot license – adding a new variable to consider when pricing up licensing options.

Autonomous actions are where the agent uses “generatively orchestrated triggers, topics, data connectors, and workflows” to act on behalf of a user. This is an additional PAYG per-message cost for all users – it is an additional cost even for users licensed with M365 Copilot.

For more info and details on the PAYG per-message pricing model – see my post here.

You can see Microsoft’s announcement here.

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Microsoft 365 Copilot Pay As You Go (PAYG) pricing


Microsoft are huge fans of the Pay As You Go (PAYG) licensing/billing model for various products and now it has been extended for M365 Copilot and Copilot Studio.

Agents created with Copilot Studio provide answers to users, and these answers are measured in “messages:

Classic Answers

These are static answers written when the agent is created and only change when manually updated. These cost 1 message.

Generative Answers

These are dynamically generated answers using the conversation’s context and other knowledge. These cost 2 messages.

Tenant Graph grounded

This is a new option and allows agents to access internal information in SharePoint and also other sources via Graph connectors. This information will be incorporated within “generative” answers given by agents. These cost 30 messages.

This capability is included for users licensed with M365 Copilot and is also available on a PAYG basis for other users.

Autonomous Actions

As the name suggests, these agents act on their own via “generatively orchestrated triggers, topics, data connectors, and workflows” to complete tasks, answer queries etc. These cost 25 messages.

These are NOT included with the M365 Copilot license, so using agents with autonomous actions will be additional spend on top of the $30 per user per month license…which is already an add-on to your existing M365 license!

How does the pricing work?

Each message costs $0.01 which seems very low…however…it can quickly start to add up. Here is an example from Microsoft:

12,800 x $0.01 = $128 in PAYG costs.

Not a huge amount, about $33,280 per year. However, that’s for 100 users. If you had 1,000 users in that scenario it becomes $332,800 per year which is a much more significant amount…it’s about the same as buying M365 Copilot licenses for those users in fact.

You can purchase messages in bundles of 25,000 for $200 per month ($0.008 per message) which can help reduce spend a little on PAYG.

It seems likely that the behaviour Microsoft are hoping to drive will be for organisations to start out with this model and then, as spend increases, move them across to M365 Copilot licenses to increase the stickiness and adoption of their latest focus product.

You can see more from Microsoft here.

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Microsoft Product Terms: February 2025


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It’s the Microsoft Product Terms for February 2025:

Added Azure Managed Applications, Azure Resource Manager, and Cloud PC to the EU Data Boundary Services…which now also includes storage of Professional Services Data.

Added Microsoft Defender for Business customers can apply Defender for Business to five devices.

Removed Microsoft 365 Information Protection and DLP – Student Use Benefit Add-on from Availability and Prerequisite Tables.

“Audio Services” renamed “PSTN Audio Services”

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Microsoft Financial Results: FY25 Q2


Microsoft have announced their Q2 results for FY25 and, not surprisingly at all, they’ve earned a LOT of money and are talking a lot about AI!

Overall results

Revenue was up 125 to $69.6 billion and Net Income was up 10% to $24.1 billion. The over-arching “Microsoft Cloud” segment increased 21% to $40.9 billion while the AI business was approx. $3.25 billion as it had an annual run rate of $13 billion, which is 175% up year on year.

Satya Nadella sad:

“We are innovating across our tech stack and helping customers unlock the full ROI of AI to capture the massive opportunity ahead,”

Productivity & Business Processes

Revenue = $24.9 billion, up 14%

This was driven by a 16% increase in M365 Commercial cloud revenue and 19% revenue growth for Dynamics 365.

Microsoft saw “better-than-expected performance in E5 and M365 Copilot, both of which drove Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).

Intelligent Cloud

Revenue = $25.5 billion, up 19%

31% growth in Azure (and other cloud services)

Earnings Call

  • There were 54 mentions of AI throughout the call.
  • Over 19.000 paying customers for Microsoft Fabric.
  • 30 million+ monthly active users (MAU) for Power BI, which is 40% up year on year.
  • 200,000 MAU for Azure AI Foundry.
  • Over 400,000 custom agents created with Copilot Studio across 160,000 orgs in the last 3 months.
  • Continued growth in the number of $100 million+ contracts for Azure and M365.

More changes to the partner channel?

CFO Amy Hood stated:

“Growth in our non-AI services was slightly lower than expected due to go-to-market execution challenges, particularly with our customers that we primarily reach through our scale motions, as we balance driving near-term non-AI consumption with AI growth.”

She described the “scale motion” as “customers we reach through partners and through more indirect methods of selling” and alluded to changes around where investments, marketing spend, and internal resources would be positioned to help drive sales through the partner channel.

Nadella also said “How do you really tweak the incentives go to market? At a time of platform shifts, you want to make sure you lean into even the new design wins, and you just don’t keep doing the stuff that you did in the previous generation.“

This could be partly behind Microsoft’s increasing drive to take more customers direct, that it gives them more control over what’s happening to drive organisations towards new platforms and products.

Check it out here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2025-Q2/press-release-webcast

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Microsoft Product Terms: January 2025


As is always the case in January, it was a quiet Product Terms with mainly just re-arranging and updating:

Various Privacy & Security terms were consolidated and a new Software Products table to the “Exceptions to the DPA” section was added.

The Microsoft 365 Cross-tenant User Data Migration option was made available for certain pre-requisite A SKUs.

Microsoft Copilot re-branding

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Microsoft to retire Viva Goals in 2025


Microsoft have announced that Viva Goals, their OKR tool, will be retired on December 31st, 2025 and that all new feature development ceased on December 4th, 2024.

The reason for this is that “overall adoption and usage of Viva Goals across the Viva Suite customer base hasn’t grown. Microsoft has been unable to reach the scale and impact needed to continue further investment“. This also means that Microsoft aren’t replacing Goals with another OKR tool so customers need to look at 3rd-party solution. If you email GoalsDecom@microsoft.com, Microsoft will offer help in that regard. The full FAQ page is here.

Microsoft say:

  • Continued access: Viva Goals will continue to be available to our existing customers until December 31, 2025, to provide you with an opportunity to plan for its end-of-life transition to other OKR solutions if desired. We will continue to maintain Viva Goals’ availability, accessibility, and security of the product, and provide product support until its retirement.
  • No new functionality Viva Goals will no longer add any new features or functionality to the product. All current design change requests (DCRs) will be closed and no new DCRs will be accepted.
  • Data migration options: Viva Goals offers data export features via API, Excel, and PowerPoint, allowing users to move their data to a solution of their choice. we recommend that users export their data before December 31, 2025.

They are keen to point out that they are still committed to the rest of the Viva Suite and further development and investment will continue.

I was quite excited about the launch of Viva Goals as I think the OKR model makes a lot of sense for businesses and being able to integrate it into Teams etc. seemed powerful. I wonder whether the failure of Viva Goals is due to Microsoft’s technology or perhaps simply that the OKR methodology isn’t widespread enough for a dedicated tool to reach critical mass?

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Microsoft Product Terms: December 2024


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Not surprisingly, December was a quiet month.

On the 1st, Microsoft made some Azure updates:

  • Added language clarifying ACS is used for business purposes only. 
  • Added Workload Hub specific terms to the Microsoft Fabric terms. 
  • Updated pricing terms. 
  • Added Azure AI Speech custom text to speech avatar to Limited Access Services

and then on the 5th:

  • Updated “Azure Stack HCI” to “Azure Local”
  • Added Defender for Endpoint F1 and F2 to MCA Availability table
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Microsoft announce cloud price decrease for GBP


Microsoft announce a price DECREASE!

Yes, you read that right…

From February 1st, 2025 GBP pricing for “commercial cloud services” will drop by 5% to 6%.

Hopefully this will help reduce the impact of some of the recent pricing increases…

Unfortunately…those of you purchasing in Brazilian Real will see a 12% increase on both cloud and on-prem software.

https://news.microsoft.com/2024/12/03/local-currency-price-adjustments-for-microsofts-commercial-cloud/

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Microsoft Get Licensing Ready comes to an end


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Microsoft’s Get Licensing Ready (GLR) training platform is being shut down as of December 31st, 2024.

A mainstay of the Microsoft channel and pretty much every reseller salesperson’s introduction to the wonderful world of Microsoft licensing, GLR has been a trusty companion to many for decades. It has been around as long as I can remember (so at least 20 years) but it is now a casualty of Microsoft’s apparent lack of interest in licensing these days.

My post on LinkedIn has been one of the most liked, commented, and reposted for some time -showing the depth of affection for the platform…and also the concern that it’s going to get even more difficult for partners and customers to understand Microsoft licensing.

I haven’t done GLR for a few years but I plan to take them all again and get one last set of certificates for posterity’s sake.

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