Microsoft have announced plans to cut a further 10,000 jobs – a shade under 5% of their total workforce. As with previous rounds of job cuts, Satya Nadella has stated they’ll continue to hire in other “key strategic areas” likely including AI and platforms.
Microsoft will see $1.2 billion in charges in Q2 from these layoffs and also “changes to [the] hardware portfolio”.
This is part of a wider trend of layoffs across the industry recently including:
Alphabet = 12,000
Amazon = 18,000 Salesforce = 8,000 Meta = 11,000
as the tech industry boom comes to a halt and companies look to re-focus and prioritise. Google have said that they expanded to quickly during the pandemic and now need to rationalise their workforce.
It will be interesting to see which areas within Microsoft see the brunt of these cuts, as that will really give insight into how they’re reshaping their business.
I wish everyone affected by this the best of luck.
Clarification to the Online Services “Acceptable Use Policy” that crypto-mining is prohibited without Microsoft’s prior approval. I wonder when they will give permission for this?!
DevOps Server 2022 added
A clarification notice around Microsoft’s communication services, relating to taxes and relations to 3rd-party services.
There are a few licensing updates and changes to be aware of with SQL Server 2022 as well as a price increase:
Flexible Virtualisation Benefit
Both licenses with active SA and active subscriptions can now be deployed with any Authorized Outsourcer – that is, anyone who isn’t a Listed Provider (Amazon, Google, Alibaba). However, don’t forget that License Mobility through Software Assurance rights still exist (via SA) which allow you to put software on the servers of an “Authorised Mobility Partner” – and the Listed Providers are eligible for this.
Furthermore, when licensing SQL Server Standard or Enterprise by virtual OSE, if you have active SA you can run an unlimited number of containers containing SQL Server within that virtual OSE.
Related to this, Microsoft have made another change that will cause some issues for certain customers. Licensing a virtual machine based on the number of virtual cores now requires Software Assurance with SQL 2022 and, as that is the only option available for licensing virtual machines with SQL Server Std 2022 (i.e. you can’t license the physical hardware to then run VMs), this means that Software Assurance is a requirement if you have virtual machines with SQL Server Std per core.
Machine Learning removal
Looking at the Product terms, it appears that Microsoft have removed the rights for SQL Server Enterprise customers to use:
Machine Learning for Window or Linux
Machine Learning Server for Hadoop
PAYG licensing
Enabled via Azure Arc, this new billing model enables organisations to pay for SQL Server on a monthly or hourly basis:
The servers must be connected to Azure Arc to use this option. For 2022, the Arc connection is a default part of the setup process while for SQL 2014 and above, it will be enabled via a capability within the Azure portal which is, according to Microsoft, coming soon. This seems to suggest that PAYG isn’t available with SQL 2012 or earlier which makes sense, given they’re all out of support.
See more on SQL PAYG here and the pricing is here.
New pricing
Microsoft have confirmed that SQL Server 2022 Standard, Enterprise, and Web pricing will increase by 10% from January 2023 – including public sector.
Microsoft price increases are coming – again. They have announced they will be performing “price harmonisation” in 2023 – where they will be bringing local currency pricing in line with US Dollar (USD) pricing. They say this is to give customers “more consistent pricing”, but I’d say it mainly to stop organisations purchasing in regions other than their primary location.
They state that some products in some regions are up to 40% cheaper than the US pricing and I believe the Euro is around 15% cheaper. Once the initial adjustment is made, Microsoft will continue the process on a 6-monthly cadence going forward to keep ensuring local pricing doesn’t drift too far from USD again. They do say that prices will be “aligned up or down” so it will be interesting to see what happens to pricing in regions such as Australia that typically pay more than USD for more products.
While the focus of the announcement is cloud pricing, on-premises software pricing will also be affected although Microsoft will consider “local and regional market dynamics including competition, business models, local currency rates and local inflation” – which includes rising energy costs.
More changes for Japan & Korea
Alongside the above, Microsoft have also revealed they will be revising pricing across all products (on-premises and cloud) in Japan & Korea from April 1, 2023. The increases are as follows:
Those of you with long-term contracts such as Enterprise Agreements won’t be affected until your renewal (or if you add new products) but now is the time to start planning how this will alter budgets over the next few years. Also, don’t forget the O365/M365 price increases in March 2022 that will also kick in on certain products you may have on your contract.
Update
An announcement on Jan 5th, 2023 for price increases across GBP, EUR, DKK, NOK, SEK currencies.
M365 Advanced Data Residency M365 Cross-tenant User Data Migration
There is also the removal of: Microsoft Threat Experts SharePoint Advanced Management Plan 1
The SharePoint SKU was only added last month but there was very little info available, so it seems likely it was added in error. Let’s see if/when it reappears.
A nice addition – Azure Active Directory Basic now allows unlimited SSO (Single Sign On) – the previous limit was 10 apps so à really significant change.
There is a 50% off promo for Defender for Endpoint on EA from Nov 1, 2023 to June 30, 2023
Let’s take a look at Microsoft’s financial results for the first quarter of FY23.
Overall revenue was $50.1 billion, an increase of 11%.
Operating income was $21.5 billion, up 6%…
but Net income was down 14% to $17.6 billion
Operating expenses were up 15% to $13.2 billion.
Looking at the individual divisions we see:
Productivity & Business Processes
Overall revenue up 9% to $16.5 billion and within that:
Office 365 Commercial revenue up 11%
LinkedIn revenue up 17%
Dynamics 365 revenue up 24%
Intelligent Cloud
Overall revenue was up 20% to $20.3 billion and within that:
Azure growth of 35%
Still a good increase but noticeably slowing down from previous quarters. Microsoft note that cloud margins are down primarily due to increased energy bills.
More Personal Computing
Overall revenue decreased slightly to $13.3 billion and within that:
Windows OEM revenue decreased 15%
Devices revenue increased 2%
Earnings Call
Satya Nadella was quick to point out the hybrid/multi-vendor approaches possible with Azure – talking about SAP & Oracle in the first couple of paragraphs.
PowerApps has almost 15 million monthly active users (MAU), a 50% year on year increase, and Power Automate has reached 7 million MAU.
Nadella also talked about Teams and how chat has overtaken email as where the average user spends their time. He also said:
“Teams is becoming a ubiquitous platform for business process.”
and shared that the number of enterprise users running 3rd party/custom apps has increased 60% year over year.
Microsoft Viva already has 20 million MAU – just the start of things for this line-up I’m sure.
Amy Hood spoke about strong E5 momentum being driven by security, compliance, and voice products and an increase in Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) too.
Nadella also stated:
“we are going to optimize for long-term customer loyalty by proactively helping them optimize [Azure] spend“
This follows on from what he said last quarter (and also matches what AWS recently said) that helping customers waste less will ultimately help them spend more.
Microsoft, somewhat confusingly, “introduced” Intune at Ignite 2022…despite it having existed for what – at least a decade at this point?! It’s more of a Jay-Z style “allow me to re-introduce myself” as it seems Microsoft have decided to make Intune the primary brand for endpoint management going forwards…say goodbye to Microsoft Endpoint Management (MEM) as part of this.
The new suite will include:
Remote Help for Windows & Android
Microsoft Tunnel for Mobile App Management
Endpoint Privilege Management
Advanced endpoint analytics
as well as more features to be announced in 2023.
The add-on license will be available for Microsoft 365 E3/E5 and any licenses that include Intune and will, not surprisingly, be cheaper than buying all the individual components separately. This is another example of where organisations licensed with M365 E5 must still acquire additional licenses – something I know many are not happy with.
Announced at Ignite 2022, Microsoft have introduced a Teams Premium add-on SKU – giving more benefits to organisations as hybrid working becomes more common and continues to evolve. Given the huge success of Teams, and how integral it has become to so many organisations, it makes sense that Microsoft will look to monetize this with a focus on hybrid features. These new options include:
Meeting Guides
This gives a set of pre-built options for different types of meetings i.e. client calls, brainstorming, help desk calls etc. that will set the length and best practices.
Customised branding
Again, the option to have customised meeting lobbies appears as well as custom backgrounds and together modes.
Intelligent Recap
This sounds like it could genuinely be a game changer.
It will use AI to pick out action items and assign owners during meetings and then create recordings which show key events such as where your name was mentioned or when a screen was shared – making it easier, and faster, to cover what you missed. It will also highlight speakers based on who you work most closely with, so you can skip through the transcripts to find relevant sections more easily.
Live translated captions
This is very cool for international companies and partnerships. An organiser having Teams Premium will mean all attendees get live captions in one of 40 languages.
Advanced Meeting Protections
New options around the security of meetings and recordings include watermarking and, for E5 customers, the ability to use Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels.
Appointment management
Teams Premium will offer advanced Virtual Appointments with better end to end management, text reminders, appointment access without the Teams app, a dashboard to see appointment overviews, and analytics. See more here.
Advanced webinar features
There are also some new features that help enhance the Teams webinar offering – something I’m particularly interested in. These include:
Registration waitlist
Automated branded reminder emails
Virtual green room – this gives a space for speakers to chat, monitor Q&A, check content etc. separate to attendees
Teams Premium also gives control over which speakers, videos etc. attendees can see – which can be very useful when you have multiple presenters at once.
Pricing is currently expected to be $10 per user per month. The Preview will begin in December 2022 and General Availability with be February 2023, although intelligent recap features will be “first half of 2023”.
As well as the Azure Stack HCI news, Microsoft have also added Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) for AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service).
How it works
This benefit is available for Windows Server Standard and Datacenter (both with SA) and also CSP server subscriptions. Hosts must be Windows Server 2019 (and later) or Azure Stack HCI
Each Windows Server core license w/SA allows use of 1 virtual core of AKS. The AKS AHB is additive, meaning the licenses can be used to cover on-prem/Azure workloads AND to use AKS. You can see more info here.
Ignite 2022 saw Microsoft expand the Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) to grant access to Azure Stack HCI.
What is it?
It is only available for Enterprise Agreement customers and only applies to Windows Server Datacenter licenses w/SA; licenses must be allocated for all physical cores in the Azure Stack HCI cluster. Licensing in this way allows you to use unlimited Windows Server base instances across the cluster. Furthermore, as per the Product Terms, the “dual-use” rights do not apply so licenses can be used as Windows Server licenses OR as Azure Stack HCI licenses.
It is activated in the Azure portal:
I question the phrasing in the Microsoft announcement here as it says that customers “exchange” their Windows Server licenses to get Azure Stack HCI. This suggests that they are somehow transformed from one type into another but that doesn’t appear to be the case – as this is via AHB, it is simply an additional right that doesn’t change the underlying licenses. As with allocating Windows Server licenses to “regular” Azure, it seems one can re-assign from Azure Stack HCI licenses back to Windows Server Datacenter licenses following the 90-day rule.
Given the increasing level of focus on CSP and the MCA, it’s interesting to see that it is restricted to Enterprise Agreement customers only. It not being made available for Open Value and MPSA customers is, rightly or wrongly, business as usual these days but CSP has been getting a lot of shiny things lately.
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 