Microsoft have announced that Windows Server 2022 is in preview and will be available “later” in 2021.
According to this Microsoft page, new security features include “Secured-core server” and Credential Guard while it also brings interoperability with Azure Arc – the service that allows Azure policies to manage on-premises and multi-cloud resources – and Storage Migration Service, which helps connect on-prem file servers to those in Azure.
There are also several updates relating to Containers – all of which show Microsoft’s focus. Although this is a new on-premises server OS, it’s all about connecting to the cloud and enabling a smooth, hybrid infrastructure.
You’ll be pleased to know that there’s no sign of any changes to the licensing model at this stage 😁
Microsoft have, once again, had a stellar quarter (Oct-Dec 20) with overall results of:
Revenue up 17% to $43.1 billion
Operating income up 29% to $17.9 billion
Looking deeper into specific product categories and areas we can see:
Productivity and Business Processes
Revenue was up 13% to $13.4 billion which included:
Office 365 Commercial up 21%
Dynamics 365 up 39%
LinkedIn up 23%
Intelligent Cloud
Revenue was up 23% to $14.6 billion and Azure was revenue growth of 50%
More Personal Computing
The “other” parts of Microsoft’s business all saw success to with revenue up 14% to $15.1 billion. This included:
Windows Commercial up 10%
Xbox up 40%
Surface up 3%
Microsoft’s results are very consistent and are outperforming pretty much every comparable competitor you can think of…Oracle, SAP, and IBM are very far away from numbers like these! Amazon are still seeing great success with AWS – currently rising around 28% – but that is a greatly limited portfolio when compared to that under Satya Nadella’s control.
There are several areas of Microsoft’s product line-up which are at the very start of their evolution and will grow and continue these results for the foreseeable future.
Microsoft have stopped producing the standalone Product Terms document and have officially launched the Product Terms website as a replacement.
I’ve been a big fan of the Product Terms document for a long time and I’m not 100% happy about this change tbh! The ability to filter the site by program (EA, MPSA etc.) and product (M365, SQL etc.) will probably make it less confusing for many people – showing only the info that’s relevant to their search.
However, being able to see everything altogether was great for spotting any changes, missing bits etc. that Microsoft hadn’t highlighted and that isn’t as easy on the new site.
My initial concern was that not having a point in time downloadable copy would put customers and partners at a disadvantage, giving them nothing to reference in future conversations. However, having played with the site a little bit it turns out you can download a document from the site. It’s quite similar to the previous document although you have to filter by program, so you don’t get a document that allows comparison across the different licensing options.
The changes in February 2021 are:
Addition of Microsoft 365 F5 SKUs (more info here)
Planning Services & Training Vouchers SA Benefits have been removed
The free Audio Conferencing promos for EA/EES/CSP have been extended to June 30, 2021
Clarification that the Microsoft 365 E3/A3 Unattended license doesn’t require a Qualifying Operating System
Updates to terms for Azure Maps and Cognitive Services
The latest Azure offering, Purview, is a “unified data governance” service to help organisations manage data across their ever expanding environments – including on-premises, IaaS multi-cloud (Azure, AWS etc.) and also SaaS services. According to Microsoft, Azure Purview will offer automated discovery and classification of data, a map of where it all resides and how it relates to each other, easy searching to locate data, and an overview of how data moves across your organisation.
Given the increasing amounts of data we all create and collect, combined with the rising threat of cyber attacks – at a personal, corporate, and national level – this is a welcome introduction.
Pricing
Azure Purview is (almost) free to try until February 28, 2021 but we can already see an overview of how it will be priced going forward.
First of all, you need to provision the “Data Map” – this is priced based on 2 things…Capacity Units and metadata storage.
Capacity Units
This is a set of resources provisioned in order to keep your Data Map up and running. One Capacity Unit can support “approx. 1 API call per second” and is currently priced at $0.342 per hour.
Metadata storage
This stores the metadata associated with the scanned assets which enables the searching capabilities within Purview. Microsoft talk about this being in a “graph” format – so this appears to be another element of the “Microsoft Graph” being surfaced as part of a product. Pricing is yet to be announced but will be on a per GB basis…I can well imagine many organisations finding themselves with a HUGE amount of this metadata storage!
Scanning
When it comes to scanning your environment, this is charged at $0.63 per “v-core hour” that you consume whilst actively scanning. Microsoft state there will be no “incremental charges” for connectors to 3rd party datastores.
Almost regardless of cost, I think many organisations will find it hard not to use this service – given the worries, risks, and potential fines that data mismanagement can bring. Microsoft have made another strong move to position themselves as an integral part of the future of business. Even if everyone stopped using Windows and Office tomorrow, Azure Purview (and other new services) would keep Microsoft at the forefront of many an organisation’s mind for years to come.
As I think most of us expected, Microsoft’s strong financial results continued in Q1 FY21.
Headline figures
In July – September 2020, Microsoft saw:
Revenue up 12% to $37.2 billion
Operating Income up 25% to $15.9 billion
Net Income up 30% to $13.9 billion
Operating Expenses grew by 10% (primarily driven by investments in Azure)
This is a fantastic performance as Microsoft – unlike many of their rivals – continue to grow and thrive during the COVID-19 pandemic. While IBM, Oracle, and SAP are all reporting lacklustre numbers – Microsoft are doing very well. This is mainly due to Microsoft’s wide and varied portfolio – if you don’t want one thing, there are plenty of others they can sell you – but also due to the relevance of their product line-up.
Not only are Microsoft 365 and Azure hugely relevant right now, so are products like the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 as they enable new ways of working and digital transformation. This is a strength many of their competitors don’t have – if you don’t want to buy a big database or an ERP system, that dramatically reduces the options for Oracle & SAP for example.
Product Highlights
Office 365 commercial revenue was up 21%
Dynamics 365 again grew by 38%
Azure saw another quarter of 48% growth
LinkedIn was up 16%
Surface revenue rose 37%
Enterprise Mobility & Security install base has grown to 152 million+ seats
On the flip side – Office Commercial was down 30% showing the move away from on-premises perpetual to cloud-based subscriptions continues apace.
Microsoft also called out “continued weakness” in transactional licensing as they saw a 1% drop in “server products” revenue. To be honest, I’m surprised it isn’t a bigger drop than that…
Another drop in Windows Pro OEM sales (22%) while Windows non-Pro OEM grew by 31%. This will partly be due to organisations de-prioritising laptop refreshes right now but also, I suspect, by users working from home buying themselves new “work” devices. That latter aspect opens up some licensing issues – as volume licensing Windows licenses generally can’t be applied to Windows Home licenses.
Microsoft are in a very strong position and it’s further proof that Satya Nadella has overseen one of the greatest corporate turnarounds for a long time!
Microsoft have announced a partnership with Nutanix to help organisations develop multi-cloud and hybrid cloud scenarios. Nutanix clusters will be added into Azure datacentres – extending on-premises Nutanix environments into the cloud:
Software and nodes will be paid for via “Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC)” or PAYG, as well as existing Nutanix licenses being portable into Azure. Azure Hybrid Benefits can be utilised on the “Nutanix Clusters on Azure” and Microsoft’s Extended Support Updates are available too. Additionally, via Azure ARC, various Azure services – including Kubernetes – can be run in on-premises Nutanix environments.
Microsoft are really working to extend Azure to as many organisations as possible – VMware on Azure, Azure Stack, Azure Arc, and now this. It seems very much the approach they took to Office software on mobile devices – if you allow people to use your service alongside those from competitors, you end up in a better position that forcing them choose one or the other.
The service is currently in public preview – more info is available here and you can sign up to the waiting list here.
Microsoft have always enjoyed a good name change and nowhere has this been more true than their rapidly growing security portfolio. You’ll be pleased to know the pace of change continues following Microsoft Ignite 2020!
What’s changed?
Old name
New name
Microsoft Threat Protection
Microsoft 365 Defender
Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection
Microsoft Defender for Office 365
Azure Advanced Threat Protection
Microsoft Defender for Identity
Azure Security Center Standard Edition
Azure Defender for Servers
Azure Security Center for IoT
Azure Defender for IoT
Advanced Threat Protection for SQL
Azure Defender for SQL
So gone are the various ATPs and Security Centers but now, like Marvel, we’ve got a bunch of Defenders to contend with!
There have also been a range of new features additions which will continue to strengthen Microsoft’s security offering including support for Amazon AWS and Google Cloud.
Only a few additions again this month but a couple are pretty interesting.
Azure DevOps Server 2020 is added.
Dynamics 365 Sales Premium is added. This is a new SKU that combines the “Sales Enterprise” and “Sales Insight” licenses for £101.80 per user per month – a saving of £7.50 pupm. Naming wise – I’m not sure that having an “Enterprise” SKU inside a “Premium” SKU really makes sense tbh!
Azure SQL Edge is added. This is a new variant of SQL made for the cloud world with features including:
Azure Stack Edge appears too – this is a physical device you keep on-premises, like a branch office or field location, to “filter, analyse, and transform your data before it moves to Azure”. Lose/damage one and it’s a $40,000 charge!
A new variant of SQL – Azure SQL Edge – is available in public preview and was added to the Product Terms in September 2020.
What is it?
This new flavour of SQL is made for the emerging, growing world of the cloud and edge computing – something of a focus for Microsoft over the last couple of years. Azure SQL Edge is based on SQL Server for Linux and, although it contains only a subset of the full functionality, it also includes features not found in SQL Server for Linux or Windows.
It supports both Intel and ARM processors and runs in containers, currently the only supported scenario is Docker hosts running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or 18.04 LTS. New features include built-in data streaming and in-database machine learning.
When would you use it?
Microsoft say it is aimed at “edge scenarios” – primarily Internet of Things (IoT) – and it allows data to be analysed and processed before it gets to the central infrastructure; this can lead to faster results and also reduced cloud and network bandwidth utilisation. This latter point is an often overlooked aspect of working with the cloud – more data moving around more places means more network usage and, in many cases, more cost too.
“You don’t need an army of database administrators to install and manage SQL Edge on all your edge devices”
As Azure SQL Edge is container-based, you can deploy it from one portal and then simply update the container as needed. If this is indeed the case, it will help with the “do more with less” approach that comes with cloud – where you can easily end up with many more servers and assets than on-premises, without a matching increase in head count!
Pricing
It’s in Public Preview at the moment, meaning it can be used at no cost (in areas where Azure IoT Edge is available) and more details on pricing and purchase model will be released once the preview is over.
*Update – Feb 2025*
Unfortunately, Azure SQL Edge is being retired by Microsoft as of September 30th, 2025.
Microsoft recommend migrating to:
SQL Server Express
SQL Server Standard
SQL Managed Instance enabled with Azure Arc
None of which are particularly similar to the Edge edition.
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 