Category: Microsoft

This category is for anything Microsoft related-so you’ll probably find that msot posts end up in here!

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Microsoft Financial Results: Q1 FY21


Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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!

Further Reading

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2021-Q1/press-release-webcast

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Microsoft Office 365 Audio Conferencing Extended Dial Out


Microsoft Office 365 Audio Conferencing Extended Dial Out for US and Canada is an add-on license that offers “virtually unlimited” calling minutes for North American users. Although subject to a fair use policy, users with this add-on won’t deduct capacity from their organisation’s pool or Communication Credits.

The license is available via EA/EAS, EES, CSP, and via the web for commercial, Edu, Non-profit and US GCC customers. I haven’t seen pricing info yet but you can see a little more info from Microsoft here.

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Microsoft SharePoint Syntex – what is it?


SharePoint Syntex was added to the Microsoft Product Terms in October 2020 – but what is it?

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Project Cortex

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.

What does SharePoint Syntex do?

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.

Taken from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/sharepoint-syntex?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

Licensing

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:

  • Access a Content Center
  • Create a document understanding model in a Content Center
  • Upload content to a library where a document understanding model is associated (whether in a Content Center or elsewhere)
  • Manually execute a document understanding model
  • View a library where a document understanding model is associated
  • Create a forms processing model via the entry point in a SharePoint library
  • Upload content to a library where a forms processing model is associated
  • View a library where a forms processing model is associated

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 😁

Further Reading

https://resources.techcommunity.microsoft.com/project-cortex-microsoft-365/faq/

Free trial and buy here

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Microsoft Product Terms – October 2020


Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com

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…

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Microsoft announce the end of Open Licensing


Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Microsoft Open Licensing is (almost) dead. The writing has been on the wall for so long it’s almost been designated a public artwork so this is no surprise but still…it’s a bit of a surprise. Open Licensing or MOLP/OLP has been the mainstay of Microsoft Volume Licensing for decades and the primary licensing vehicle for most SMBs and smaller organisations around the world.

What changed?

A few years ago though, Microsoft introduced the CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) program and it fast became the anointed one, with a huge amount of focus from Microsoft and it’s been clear for a long time that (part of) the eventual plan was to replace Open licensing.

When they stopped adding new products to the Open pricelist, that was a pretty big sign but the clearest indication the end was nigh was in July 2020. Microsoft announced that perpetual software like Office Standard, Exchange Server, Project Professional etc. was coming to CSP. So far, CSP has been all about subscription software so wasn’t an option for organisations who, for whatever reason, preferred to purchase their Microsoft outright; those customers stayed on Open licensing.

What’s happening?

Perpetual software via CSP is in limited availability at the moment with general availability slated for January 2021. Nothing changes on Open licensing until December 31, 2021 – so you can continue to buy & renew licenses, Software Assurance (SA), and Online Services throughout 2021. Come January 1, 2022, commercial* customers will no longer be able to buy or renew licenses or online services via Open licensing.

*The specific mention of “commercial” customers is interesting. From that, one can imply that non-profit and academic customers will not be impacted…at least not at the same time. It’s often the case that changes apply first for commercial customers.

Post Jan 1, 2022:

Software Assurance will continue until it’s expiration, even if that is beyond December 31, 2021.

Online Services tokens can still be assigned and used, even after December 31, 2021 – but it must be within 5 -years of purchase.

For new licenses without SA, the primary (for many, only) option will be to buy via CSP.

Software Assurance isn’t available via CSP so, if that’s a deal breaker, you’ll need to look at one of the two Open Value programs – either:

  • Open Value Perpetual (OVP) – Perpetual licenses + SA
  • Open Value Subscription (OVS) – Subscription licenses with SA benefits

If you purchase via Open Licensing, work with your partner to understand which program/s will best serve you in 2022 and what additional costs you may be facing. You can see Microsoft’s announcement here.

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Microsoft Teams customer promotions


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.

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Microsoft and Nutanix hybrid cloud


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:

https://www.nutanix.com/blog/hybrid-cloud-solutions-with-nutanix-and-microsoft-azure

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.

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Microsoft Productivity Servers in 2021


What is the future for the on-premises versions of Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Skype for Business Server aka the Productivity Servers? Microsoft’s move to the cloud is clear, successful, and accelerating so where does that leave organisations not yet ready to ditch their locally deployed servers? Will there be another release or are the current 2019 versions the end of the road?

More information has been revealed at Microsoft Ignite 2020, both in this Teams session “On Skype for Business? Design your path to Microsoft Teams” and this Exchange session- “Exchange – Here, There, and Everywhere“. There WILL be a new release (or a “vNext” as Microsoft call it) for:

  • Skype for Business Server
  • Exchange Server
  • SharePoint Server

available in the 2nd half of 2021 – so still around 12 months away at the time of writing.

Licensing change

These next releases will be on-premises but available only via a subscription model. Does this mean there will a change to the licensing model i.e. will they remove CALs etc. or is it just the same licenses and metrics but with no perpetual license option? I’m not sure yet but I’ll keep an eye out for more info.

Microsoft are treating this as an intermediate step for customers unwilling to move to Office 365. Once the CAPEX v OPEX argument is removed, I’m sure many orgs will find their move to the cloud speeds up significantly – which is a win for Microsoft.

There are plenty of technical improvements coming for all the products, as well as Exchange Online (including “+ addresses” like Gmail which is cool!) – the Ignite videos and the links below will give more info on those.

Further Reading

TomTalks blog

Petri article

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Microsoft Security name changes – September 2020


Image by 200 Degrees from Pixabay

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 nameNew name
Microsoft Threat ProtectionMicrosoft 365 Defender
Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat ProtectionMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Office 365 Advanced Threat ProtectionMicrosoft Defender for Office 365
Azure Advanced Threat ProtectionMicrosoft Defender for Identity
Azure Security Center Standard EditionAzure Defender for Servers
Azure Security Center for IoTAzure Defender for IoT
Advanced Threat Protection for SQLAzure 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.

Further Reading

Microsoft SIEM & XDR features and name changes

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Microsoft Power BI Premium per-user


Image by nugroho dwi hartawan from Pixabay

Announced at Microsoft Ignite 2020, Power BI Premium has a new “per-user” licensing model. Previously available only via a “capacity” model, at a pretty high price point, this new licensing option will make it more cost effective for companies to get started.

The main reason I talk to people about Power BI Premium is licensing. With Power BI Pro, EVERY user consuming a dashboard need a Pro license – which can get pretty expensive pretty quickly. Power BI Premium per Capacity removes the need for each user to be licensed with Pro meaning, even with it’s high monthly cost, it can work out more cost-effective for heavy use cases.

While there have been feature differences between Pro & Premium, they’ve not been a reason for these conversations – now however, it looks as though that Microsoft hope that may change. This new licensing model makes it easier, and cheaper, for smaller orgs and teams of developers to access the high-end Power BI Premium features. Perhaps this is an effort to compete further with Salesforce Tableau et al.

Chart comparing the Premium features per user vs. capacity
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/answering-your-questions-around-the-new-power-bi-premium-per-user-license/?s=09

To access content in a “Premium per-user workspace”, each user must have a “Premium per-user” license so the licensing, in a nutshell is:

If you want to get access to the additional Premium features for named users, Premium per user (PPU) is the way to go.

If you want to allow unfettered access to dashboards without worrying about per user licensing, Premium per capacity is still the answer.

Getting access

Whilst in preview, Power BI Premium per-user will be free of charge. Regarding eventual pricing, Microsoft said in their announcement:

Premium per user will be uniquely affordable and highly competitive among individual user offerings in the industry.  Stay tuned for the official pricing announcement as we get closer to the GA timeframe.  I guarantee you won’t want to miss it.

You can sign up to be notified when the preview goes live here – https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-power-bi-premium-per-user.html?LCID=EN-US

The “further details” link below has a well moderated comments section which features several answers from Microsoft clarifying some of the common questions too.

Further Reading

Microsoft Announcement

Further details from Microsoft

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