Cloudy with a chance of Licensing
Latest news on Microsoft licensing, Cloud, and AI
A very quiet start to 2021 from Microsoft:
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.
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 you’d expect, it’s a quiet month.
Microsoft 365 Business Voice, the SMB cloud telephony package, is added. Available via CSP and requires Microsoft 365 Business Basic/Business Standard/Business Premium.
The various name changes (ATP = Defender etc.) have (finally) been updated.
2 x Power Apps promotions that could be quite interesting have been added:
“Power Apps per App” promo = Available to new/existing EA/EAS/CSP customers & has a minimum purchase of 200.
“Power Apps per User” promo = Available to new/existing EA or EAS (not CSP) customers & has a minimum purchase of 5,000.
Just 2 product additions this month:
Microsoft Cloud Healthcare Add-on:
This can be added onto M365 E3/E5, Power Apps/Automate/BI, or a range of D365 licenses
GitHub Enterprise Æ <– 👀 Not sure if this is the actual name or a typo! As a couple of people have pointed out, it’s got a bit of an Elon Musk vibe 😂
Couple of promotions added too…
Free Audio Conferencing licenses for EA, EAS, and EES customers:
You need to have a paid sub with Teams.
Requires min. 20% Teams adoption within 6 months
Not available in China or India
Free audio conferencing for CSP & Web direct:
Free (up to) 12 months licenses are available via the admin portal, not in China or India.
SharePoint Syntex was added to the Microsoft Product Terms in October 2020 – but what is it?
First of all – we need to consider Project Cortex. This is a Microsoft program to weave Artificial Intelligence (AI) into a range of their products to help users and serves as something of an “umbrella”. SharePoint Syntex is the first product “from” Project Cortex but there are clear plans from Microsoft for several more to follow.
Introducing the concept of “topic centers”, SharePoint Syntex aims to automatically replicate the way that humans process documents including recognizing content, extracting information, and applying metadata tags. It works across Office docs, PDFs, and images and is another example of Microsoft’s move towards Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – alongside their advances with the Power Platform and Microsoft 365 E3.
For organisations processing a lot of data within documents – such as CVs, proposals, articles etc. – this could represent a new way for them to work smarter, not harder. Utilising AI to perform many of these tasks will free up human users for higher value projects. Microsoft are working on connectors to enable organisations to pull data from 3rd party systems into the Microsoft Graph and then utilise it within SharePoint Syntex.
At launch, it only supports English and Microsoft plan to add additional languages “in 2021”. They do say however, that you can create bespoke “topics” in any language and that certain functions, such as processing forms content, are language agnostic.
SharePoint Syntex is available as an add-on license for commercial Microsoft 365 customers and costs $5 per user per month. It appears to be available for the Microsoft 365 Business SKUs as well as the Enterprise suites.
Anyone who will be “using, consuming, or otherwise benefitting from” the capabilities of SharePoint Syntex will need a license. Microsoft list out a range of scenarios that require licenses including where users:
This creates a whole new set of circumstances for organisations to become under-licensed and to have those wonderful, bordering on the philosophical conversations with Microsoft like “What IS the definition of benefiting?”, “What exactly is a “capability”?” etc 😁
Teams Rooms Standard & Premium Device subscription licenses have been added.
SharePoint Syntex is added. This is “trainable AI” that can help process corporate data and automate some of the tasks involved. See more info on what it is and how it’s licensed here.
Dynamics 365 Project Operations added. As sure as night turns to day, there’s a new D365 SKU 😂 This is a replacement for Project Service Automation (PSA).
The snappily named “Audio Conferencing Extended Dial-out minutes to USA/CAN” is added. This add-on license gives “virtually unlimited” US & Canada dial-out minutes, although there is a “fair use” policy.
The new “Extra Graph Connector Capacity” license enables additional indexing using Microsoft Graph connectors. Graph being Microsoft’s evolving connective layer between various MS products that we will continue to see pop up over the coming months for sure. In my opinion, this is another example of Microsoft moving towards a licensing model reminiscent of IBM/SAP/Salesforce where there are 100s of odd, obscure metrics based around quantity and usage – making them easy to exceed and difficult to track.
None of the recently announced security name changes have been updated though…
To help drive adoption of Teams, Microsoft have announced a couple of customer promotions:
Audio Conferencing for free
For Enterprise Agreement customers, the offer is available immediately until January 21, 2021 and licenses are free until the end of your enrolment.
For purchases via partners and the web portal, you get the licenses free for 12 months. Offer starts October 1, 2020 and ends March 31, 2021 and isn’t available in China or India.
35% off Teams Advanced Communications
Available now for Enterprise Agreement customers (ends January 31, 2021) and “coming soon” if you buy via partners or the web portal. This is available worldwide.
See Microsoft’s post here.
Towards the end of 2019, Microsoft announced the ability for users to “self-serve” when it came to purchasing Power Platform licenses. This allowed users to buy licenses directly in the portal, circumventing central IT although, after much kerfuffle, Microsoft made it possible for organisations to turn off this feature.
Microsoft have now added Project & Visio Plan 1 & 3 licenses to the self-serve roster – clearly this is a purchasing channel they’re keen to continue exploring. In several areas, Microsoft appear to be slowly moving towards more direct sales models, a la Salesforce, and this is part of that approach – building up loyalty and customer stickiness among the users, regardless of what the overall company stance may be.
Find more info on how to allow/deny this capability here.
Announced during Microsoft Inspire, August 1, 2020 will see a new add-on SKU for Microsoft Teams – “Advanced Communications”. Sitting as an add-on to any SKU that includes Teams it will give a range of features including:
although it seems not all features will be available immediately. It’s an interesting move…it seems quite a narrow set of features to put into a chargeable SKU – especially at $12 per user per month – so I’m keen to see how well this takes off. Perhaps it will be one of Microsoft’s semi-regular u-turns where they decide not to charge in the end?
Props to Matt Landis who spotted this first – he has more info on his blog too.
It’s just a few weeks into their new financial year and Microsoft are already making changes.
Continuing their focus on the CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) program becoming the primary licensing model for the majority of organisations, Microsoft are now making perpetual software aka ‘software licenses’ available via CSP – although Software Assurance (SA) will not be available. This includes products such as:
The software must be run on hardware dedicated to the customer and downgrade rights are included.
Aimed primarily at those customers who purchase via Microsoft Open licensing, this new offering is intended to reduce the need for organisations to have CSP and another license agreement. From July 1, 2020, a select set of “indirect providers and their indirect resellers” will be able to transact these new additions and then it will open up to all CSP partners from January 2021.
UPDATE AUGUST 1,2020: Microsoft have announced they’re cancelling the introduction of both the Enterprise Voice SKUs AND adding Calling Plans to E5.
Shoutout to Rob Quickenden for highlighting this change in Twitter.
Microsoft say in their updated post that they’re no longer launching ” due to rapidly evolving market conditions” and that they will “continue to assess the market and sales data to determine whether the launch will be rescheduled”.
This seems like a strange move. The additions made a lot of sense and have been well received by most people that have already heard about it! I wonder what Microsoft’s logic is?
See more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/announcements/2020-july#10
August 1, 2020 will see the introduction of “Microsoft 365 Enterprise Voice” – a combination of:
Which will be available in ‘Plan 1’ and ‘Plan 2’ flavours – ‘Plan 1’ will include 120 minutes of domestic outbound calling while the number of minutes in ‘Plan 2’ is still to be revealed.
These will be available via Enterprise Agreement (EA & EAS), CSP, and Web Direct for all countries where Calling Plans are currently available – except for the United States and Puerto Rico. License pre-requisites are M365 F3/E3 or O365 F3/E1/E3.
Additionally, 120 minutes of domestic outbound calling will be added to:
At no additional cost – although it will require a new SKU.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/announcements/2020-july
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 