Frontline Worker Use Rights have moved to the Universal Terms for Online Services from product specific pages
A new definition for “Frontline Worker License” has been introduced in the Glossary
“Frontline Worker License means a license for a Microsoft Product designated with an “F”, “FLW”, or “Frontline” as identified in the Product Conditions table of product specific terms, which are subject to the Eligibility to Assign Frontline Worker Licenses terms in the Universal License Terms for all Online Services.”
Added Windows 10 ESU Cloud Managed SKUs
Removed Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection and Fraud Protection Additional Capacity from Availability tables
Updated Windows 365 Frontline terms and grant Windows 365 access rights for Windows Cloud PC OS
Added Windows 365 Disaster Recovery Plus Add-on to Availability Table
Removed “without Microsoft’s prior written approval” from the clause preventing using MS service to mine crypto…I guess they realised they were never going to give anyone permission for this!
Changed the Use Rights for Azure Local software from:
“Customer may use the Azure Local software only (i) on servers dedicated to Customer’s internal use“
to
“Customer may use the Azure Local software only (i) on devices dedicated to Customer’s internal use“
Microsoft say this represents a move to “include smaller, more affordable devices than traditional servers“
They also removed the following clause “Any customer support for Azure Local that may be available from Microsoft requires that Azure Local runs on server hardware that is pre-validated and listed in the Azure Local catalog or any successor.”
Added Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat to the list of EU Data Boundary Services
March 5th
You can now add the Microsoft 365 E5 Security add-on to the Business Premium SKU.
March 12th
Added a section on Data Handling of Query Data with M365 Copilot & M365 Copilot Chat:
Microsoft has no rights in Query Data other than as needed to provide the services,
Query Data is not used to improve Bing,
Query Data is not used to create advertising profiles or track user behavior,
Query Data is not shared with advertisers or otherwise beyond Microsoft and its contracted suppliers who are subject to terms no less protective than these provisions,
Query Data is not used to train generative AI foundation models, and
Query Data is treated as Customer confidential information and protected by appropriate technical and organizational measures.
Clarification that certain concurrent use rights for Defender on up to 5 devices does not include Server OSEs:
Eligible Licensed Users may use Microsoft Defender for Business on up to five concurrent devices. Customer may not use a Microsoft Defender for Business User SL with server OSEs.
Eligible Licensed Users may use Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management or Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management Add-on on up to five concurrent devices. Customer may not use Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management or Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management Add-On User SLs with server OSEs.
It’s the Microsoft Product Terms for February 2025:
Added Azure Managed Applications, Azure Resource Manager, and Cloud PC to the EU Data Boundary Services…which now also includes storage of Professional Services Data.
Added Microsoft Defender for Business customers can apply Defender for Business to five devices.
Removed Microsoft 365 Information Protection and DLP – Student Use Benefit Add-on from Availability and Prerequisite Tables.
Microsoft have announced their Q2 results for FY25 and, not surprisingly at all, they’ve earned a LOT of money and are talking a lot about AI!
Overall results
Revenue was up 125 to $69.6 billion and Net Income was up 10% to $24.1 billion. The over-arching “Microsoft Cloud” segment increased 21% to $40.9 billion while the AI business was approx. $3.25 billion as it had an annual run rate of $13 billion, which is 175% up year on year.
Satya Nadella sad:
“We are innovating across our tech stack and helping customers unlock the full ROI of AI to capture the massive opportunity ahead,”
Productivity & Business Processes
Revenue = $24.9 billion, up 14%
This was driven by a 16% increase in M365 Commercial cloud revenue and 19% revenue growth for Dynamics 365.
Microsoft saw “better-than-expected performance in E5 and M365 Copilot, both of which drove Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).
Intelligent Cloud
Revenue = $25.5 billion, up 19%
31% growth in Azure (and other cloud services)
Earnings Call
There were 54 mentions of AI throughout the call.
Over 19.000 paying customers for Microsoft Fabric.
30 million+ monthly active users (MAU) for Power BI, which is 40% up year on year.
200,000 MAU for Azure AI Foundry.
Over 400,000 custom agents created with Copilot Studio across 160,000 orgs in the last 3 months.
Continued growth in the number of $100 million+ contracts for Azure and M365.
More changes to the partner channel?
CFO Amy Hood stated:
“Growth in our non-AI services was slightly lower than expected due to go-to-market execution challenges, particularly with our customers that we primarily reach through our scale motions, as we balance driving near-term non-AI consumption with AI growth.”
She described the “scale motion” as “customers we reach through partners and through more indirect methods of selling” and alluded to changes around where investments, marketing spend, and internal resources would be positioned to help drive sales through the partner channel.
Nadella also said “How do you really tweak the incentives go to market? At a time of platform shifts, you want to make sure you lean into even the new design wins, and you just don’t keep doing the stuff that you did in the previous generation.“
This could be partly behind Microsoft’s increasing drive to take more customers direct, that it gives them more control over what’s happening to drive organisations towards new platforms and products.
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.
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 😊
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:
Windows Server 2025 added
Windows Server PAYG via Azure Arc is added
System Center 2025 added
Windows 10 ESU added
Various additional/refined terms for Azure Services
Let’s take a look at the Win Svr PAYG option in more detail based on the Product Terms:
Customer must have a valid Windows Server Standard or Windows Server Datacenter License to use the PAYG option. <– Just one license or all cores in the server?
For Licensed Servers running PAYG virtual machines, there are no restrictions on the number of PAYG virtual machines that can be deployed.
Additional virtualization rights are not granted. A separate License is required for each guest. <– So you don’t get 2 OSEs for Std and Unlimited for Datacenter…each PAYG VM needs to be paid for.
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.
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 