Cloudy with a chance of Licensing
Latest news on Microsoft licensing, Cloud, and AI
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.
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.
More Microsoft price rises coming in 2025, following on from several over the last few years:
Monthly SKUs
All licenses on a pay-Monthly basis on CSP, MCA-E, and Buy Online will increase by 5% from April 1st, 2025. These include:
Microsoft 365
Office 365
Enterprise Mobility + Security
Windows 365
Dynamics 365
Power Platform (Inc. Power BI)
NOT included are Azure RIs, Savings Plans, Marketplace, Github.
Power BI
From April 1st, 2025 Power BI pricing is increasing by up to 40%:
Power BI Pro will be $14 (currently $9.99)
Power BI Premium Per User will be $24 (currently $20)
This won’t increase the price of E5.
Teams Phone
From April 1st, 2025 Teams Phone SKUs are increasing by up to 25%
Teams Phone Standard will be $10 (currently $8)
Teams Phone Frontline will be $5 (currently $4)
Calling plans are increasing too.
See the Microsoft post here – https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft_365blog/flexible-billing-for-microsoft-365-copilot-pricing-updates-for-annual-subscripti/4288536
So the rumours were true…kind of…to some degree.
Microsoft have announced changes to the Enterprise Agreement but, not unusually, it’s still all a bit unclear.
“Beginning January 1, 2025, a small percentage of cloud Enterprise Agreements (EA) in direct markets will no longer be eligible for renewal under the existing EA framework”
What exactly is a “cloud EA”?
Is it where there is only Azure? Only Azure and M365?
Why not all cloud EAs?
How is that defined?
What will be the alternative?
“For enterprise customers, the Microsoft Customer Agreement for enterprise (MCA-E, the digital evolution of the traditional EA), will provide the optimal, streamlined solution.”
This is direct from Microsoft but is, in many ways, a “bigger” version of CSP rather than a slightly different EA.
So, “evolution” is an interesting choice. That implies a continuation whereas I’d probably us the word “replacement”…
Microsoft will begin notifying impacted customers in Jan 2025 that they cannot renew into the EA.
The post also says:
“Partners will continue to earn incentives when transacting EA renewals”
So they’re not all disappearing…at least not yet!
This marks yet another shift and yet another step towards more licensing business going direct to Microsoft.
To balance this out, they have also announced thst Copilot for M365/Sales/Service will be available on a monthly billing basis from December 1st…but will be 5% more expensive.
As well, all current monthly SKUs will have a 5% price increase from April 2025 and Power BI is increasing. I’ll do a separate post on that shortly.
It is interesting that the final section of the Microsoft post is titled “Microsoft is a partner-led company”…
If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch 😊
You can see the Microsoft post here:
After a delay of several hours where the website wasn’t working (one of the perils of this current format), we can now see the changes this month are:
This, taken from the Microsoft Learn page, is very odd:
Apparently, you can only use Windows Server PAYG if you install a retail copy of Windows Server 2025?!
We have also seen that there will be a 10% price increase for Windows Server 2025 & System Center 2025 from December 1st 2024 and then also for SPLA from January 1st, 2025.
The October 2024 Microsoft Product Terms are fairly quiet:
Self-Hosting & Disaster Recovery rights have been added to Windows Server & SQL Server subscription licenses under MCA.
Project is now “Planner & Project Plan 3/5”
GitHub Copilot Enterprise added
LTSC versions of Windows Enterprise and Office 2024 are added
Microsoft have introduced a new SKU: Office 365 E1 Plus. This contains the current E1 features and then adds:
It will be $20 per user per month or $17.75 without Teams. There is a minimum of 100 licenses and a maximum of 2,400.
Currently there is a promotion offering a 30% discount when purchased as an annual subscription.
This CSP only SKU is restricted to certain global regions:
LATAM, ASEAN, India and select markets in Central Asia, the Middle
East, and Africa
We’ve got some new M365 licenses added to EA, EAS, and MCA (CSP) – first up, a bunch more Frontline Worker SKUS:
Also “Python in Excel” is now available as an add-on license for:
M365 Apps for Business/Enterprise
M365 Business Standard/Premium
O365 E3/E5
One would assume it can also be added to M365 E3/E5, as that includes Apps for Enterprise…but then why are Business Std/Prem listed separately?
It’s to be noted that “Python in Excel” has been in public preview since August 2023 with the features freely available for Excel within Microsoft 365 subscriptions. However, the intention has always been to move some of the features behind a paid license:
“While in Preview, Python in Excel will be included with your Microsoft 365 subscription. After the Preview, some functionality will be restricted without a paid license. More details will be available before General Availability.”
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/introducing-python-in-excel-the-best-of-both-worlds-for-data/ba-p/3905482
Microsoft have added a section clarifying that Extended Security Updates (ESUs) don’t include support. Sounds like there’s been some confusion!
It’s the Microsoft Product Terms for August 2024 – the first of the new FY so not much going on but let’s take a look.
O365/M365 A1 added as a base license for Copilot for M365
The base licenses for Copilot for Sales & Services have been expanded, although not to the extent of Copilot for M365. You can now add these to:
Microsoft 365 Business Basic/Standard/Premium/F1/F3/E3/A1/A3/E5/A5
Office 365 F3/E1/E3/A1/A3/E5/A5
Intune Frontline Worker SKUs added to MCA
Changes to (seemingly) tighten the wording around using Open AI content for training purposes.
It’s that time of year again – Microsoft have announced their Q4 and full financial year results…so let’s take a look.
Revenue = $245.1 billion, a 16% increase
Net Income = $88.1 billion, a 22% increase
Microsoft Cloud = $135 billion +, a 23% increase.
Q4 Revenue = $64.7 billion, a 15% increase
Q4 Net Income = $22 billion, a 10% increase
Microsoft Cloud
This isn’t a Business Unit but rather a group of related products across the organisation including:
Revenue was $36.8 billion, an increase of 21% Year on Year (YoY).
Microsoft note that gross margin decreased YoY to 69%. This is driven by “sales mix shift to Azure” but was partially offset by Microsoft making Azure improvements including scaling their AI Infrastructure.
Now let’s look at some of the individual Business Units and how they performed in Q4 FY24.
Revenue = $20.3 billion, an 11% increase
Office 365 Commercial = 13% increase. Seat growth was again driven by SMB and Frontline Worker growth while Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) growth was driven by E5 and Copilot for M365.
LinkedIn = 10% increase
Dynamics 365 = 19% increase <– This is now almost 90% of all Dynamics revenue.
This gives a good overview of growth over the last 5 quarters:
Revenue = $28.5 billion, a 19% increase
Azure (and other cloud services) growth was 29% for this quarter, a little drop from the percentage point increase of the last 2 quarters but, as it’s Q4, likely increasing from a higher base. Microsoft highlight that 8 points of this growth was from AI services.
Amy Hood (CFO) states that AI demand is higher than Microsoft’s currently available capacity but they expect availability to increase in H2 FY25 aka Jan 2025 onwards.
Server Products grew by 2% this quarter, again driven by hybrid BYOL use with Azure Hybrid Benefit.
Overall growth over the last 5 quarters looks like this:
In terms of how Microsoft are spending money, Amy Hood, CFO, stated that:
“Cloud and AI related spend represents nearly all of total capital expenditures [CAPEX]. Within that, roughly half is for infrastructure needs where we continue to build and lease datacenters that will support monetization over the next 15 years and beyond. The remaining cloud and AI related spend is primarily for servers, both CPUs and GPUs, to serve customers based on demand signals.”
Amy Hood gave her expectations for Q1 FY25 (and beyond) and they are:
Expected revenue growth of between 10% and 11% in constant currency (or $20.3 to $20.6 billion), with O365 driven by E5 and Copilot for M365.
Intelligent Cloud
Expected revenue growth of 18 – 20% (or $28.6 to $28.9 billion) with Azure expected to be 28% – 29% up.
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 