Category: office 365

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Microsoft Office 365 update changes


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Microsoft are changing the Office 365 update models again!

1) They’re introducing the “Monthly Enterprise Channel” – for orgs who want new features each month but with “added predictability, insights and control”…although the insight and control elements won’t be available until later in the year.

This was available as of May 12th, 2020.

2) June 9th sees name changes for the update channels (old name –> new name):

  • Insider –> Beta Channel
  • Monthly Channel (Targeted) –> Current Channel (Preview)
  • Monthly Channel –> Current Channel
  • Monthly Enterprise Channel *new addition*
  • Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) –> Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel (Preview)
  • Semi-Annual Channel –> Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel

3) June 9th will also see the default update model for Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise (aka Office 365 ProPlus) on NEW tenants switch to Current Channel, rather than Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel. Existing tenants won’t change.

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Microsoft buy Softomotive: RPA goodness ahead


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Microsoft have been big on driving the “low code/no code” movement through their Power Automate and Power Apps products for a while now. They coined (or at least popularised) the term “Citizen Developer” for people who aren’t “traditional” developers but are creating their own applications with these new tools and there is a growing community too.

April saw the introduction of new RPA (Robotic Process Automation) licensing for Microsoft 365 and Power Automate – which I looked at here. Now, Microsoft have announced the acquisition of Softomotive to boost the capabilities of Power Automate via their WinAutomation offering – which, if you have a Power Automate RPA attended license, is available at no extra cost.

RPA is definitely an area of increasing importance, driven by the impact of COVID-19 to a large degree, and certainly represents a big focus and growth area for Microsoft and its partners. It is also a whole new area for licensing confusion and disagreements so whatever your role, pay attention to the robots! 🤖

Further Reading

MS announcement

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Microsoft 365 changes in March


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Microsoft have announced a few big changes in March 2020 around:

Microsoft 365 F1 & F3 – a new SKU and a name change

Per-device licensing for Office 365 ProPlus

Name changes to certain Office 365 products

I’ve gone into detail on all 3 here – https://www.itassetmanagement.net/2020/03/31/microsoft-365-changes-march-2020/

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Per-device licensing for Office 365 Pro Plus


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Microsoft have finally announced per-device licensing of Office 365 Pro Plus* for commercial organisations – following its introduction to the education EES agreement last year. Coming, like a Hollywood blockbuster, in “summer 2020” – this is something that some organisations have been waiting on for a LONG time – particularly in verticals such as retail and manufacturing.

How to use it

As ever, there are conditions to its availability:

  • Only available as an add-on license
  • Only available via EA/EAS
  • Device must be Windows 10 – version 1803 or later
  • Office Pro Plus must be version 1907 or later
  • Device must be Azure Active Directory (AD) or hybrid AD joined

and there are various steps that need to be taken to enable it, including group policy changes.

I’ve long said that Microsoft would do this one day as a big portion of their customers wanted it and a sizeable chunk of potential cloud business was being blocked. If you’re a Microsoft customer who’s been holding out on moving to the cloud, expect a call from your friendly neighbourhood partner soon 😊

You can read further and get more details on the various technical pre-requisites here – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/device-based-licensing

*As per this MS post here, Office 365 Pro Plus is now renamed “Microsoft 365 Apps” 🙄

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Microsoft retiring Invoicing and Customer Manager


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Microsoft have announced that they’re retiring 2 of their SMB focused products included in certain Office 365 flavours: Microsoft Invoicing and Microsoft Customer Manager. They’ve not indicated why but one would assume it’s due to a lack of customer interest.

According to a statement given to Mary Jo Foley of ZDnet, Microsoft have been offering affected customers special deals with “Invoice2Go” and “Nimble” to help them transition to their replacement services.

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Microsoft Product Terms: October 2017


Microsoft have introduced a number of changes in the October 2017 Product Terms document – let’s take a look.

SQL Server 2017

Linux

SQL Server 2017 has been released, and the big thing is its support for Linux.

Microsoft point out page 29 of the Product Terms that “SQL Server Licenses are platform agnostic” and can be used on “Windows or Linux platforms”.

Machine Learning Server

The Product Terms also states that only customers with SQL Server Enterprise + SA may use updates to “Machine Learning Server for Windows or Linux” that are released after October 2017.

Additionally, for each SQL Server Enterprise core license with active SA, customers may run “Machine Learning Server for Hadoop” on up to 5 (five) servers.

What is “Machine Learning Server” you ask? Good question! It was “Microsoft R Server” and now, with the 9.2 release, it becomes “Machine Learning Server”.

For more info – head to this Microsoft blog.

R Server

The various flavours of “R Server” are being retired and so there are transition plans in place for those organisations with Software Assurance.

R Server for Hadoop

For each 1 (one) R Server for Hadoop license with active SA, you may renew SA for 2 (two) x SQL Server Enterprise Core Licenses.

R Server for Linux

For each 2 (two) R Server for Linux licenses with active SA, you may renew SA for 2 (two) x SQL Server Enterprise Core Licenses.

R Server for Teradata DB

For each 1 (one) R Server for Teradata license, you may renew SA for 6 (six) x SQL Server Enterprise Core Licenses.

SQL Server for Linux Promotion

On page 95, we see there is a promo running from October 1, 2017 to September 30, 2018 where:

“Microsoft will offer a Linux-specific subscription license for SQL Server 2017”

and, unlike the regular license this promo offering will:

“allow use of SQL Server on the Linux platform only”.

I can currently only assume that this promo offering will be cheaper than the license that offers dual platform rights, but let’s see!

Microsoft 365 F1

This is a new offering, aimed at those “Firstline” (formerly Kiosk) workers, for whom Office 365 F1 (formerly K1) was intended. Microsoft are now looking to extended the features and benefits of Windows 10 and EMS to these workers too – hence an F1 version of the recently renamed Microsoft 365 bundle license.

There are a couple of key things to note:

“The Windows component of Microsoft 365 F1 operates as an Online Service” and does NOT have rights to:

  • Prior versions
  • Different language versions
  • Different platform versions
  • Lower editions of Windows (including LTSB)

Nor does it grant rights to access or use “virtualized instances of Windows”.

A Microsoft 365 F1 USL DOES grant access to Windows Servers, but is not a “CAL Equivalent License” for any other product.

A “step-up” from Office 365 F1 to Microsoft 365 F1 is available.

 

Visio Online licensing

There have been changes to the licensing here. We can see on page 5 of the Product Terms that:

Visio Pro for Office 365

has been removed and replaced by:

Visio Online Plan 1 & Plan 2

There doesn’t appear to be any further public info on what the plans contain etc. but, as it appears, I’ll be sure to post.

Exchange Online Inactive Mailboxes

A new license has been added to the Exchange Online product line – the “Exchange Online Inactive Mailbox” SKU.

The product name is fairly self-explanatory as this license is required when licensing inactive mailboxes. Again, when there is more public information, I will update with the ins & outs.

UPDATE: Microsoft have confirmed that this change WILL NOT be taking place currently. Although the SKU has been added to the Product Terms, it is not active.

Skype for Business Online Renaming

We get confirmation this month of the Skype for Business Online name changes:

Skype for Business Online PSTN Calling = Calling Plan

Skype for Business Online PSTN Conferencing = Audio Conferencing

Skype for Business Online PSTN Consumption = Communication Credits

Skype for Business Online Cloud PBX = Phone System

Education

We see that Microsoft 365 (the bundle of Windows 10 Enterprise, Office 365 & Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS)) A3 & A5 have been added to the product line-up.

There have also been changes to the Student Use Benefits:

Student Use Benefit

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