What are the main licensing updates for March 2023?

Welcome to our licensing update for March 2023. This month we only have a couple of updates on the Microsoft Product Terms to discuss with you, so let’s dive in!

3 updates for March 2023

  1. Microsoft Intune Suite
  2. Microsoft 365 new products:
    1. Defender for Vulnerability management Add-on to Defender for Endpoint Plan 2
    2. Forensic Evidence (Add-on to Insider Risk Management)
  3. Other changes to Product Terms

1. Microsoft Intune Suite

The first item is also the most important. Microsoft has released an updated Availability table to include Intune Suite and Intune Plan 2 as well as an updated prerequisite table for both of these offers.

The prerequisites are Microsoft Business Premium/E3/E5/F1/F3, Enterprise Mobility and Security E3/E5 or a Microsoft Intune license. The Microsoft Intune license is the basic license for this suite. The Intune Suite unifies Mission Critical Advanced Endpoint Management and Security Solutions to SIMP Bundle.

However, what has changed exactly, as this is not new news? In a blogpost published by Microsoft on March 1st they claim the new Intune Suite “will simplify customer’s endpoint management experience, improve their security posture and keep people at the centre with exceptional user experiences”.

They list three reasons why the new Intune Suite will matter to you:

  • Better security by reducing attack vectors
  • Simplifying through consolidation and automation of IT and security operations workflows
  • Lower management overhead and reduced support costs lead to more savings.

Our reading of this: it’s a lot of marketing mumbo jumbo!

What is the Microsoft Intune Suite?

So what exactly is the Microsoft Intune Suite? Microsoft announced the plans to launch this suite back in March 2022 already. The suite covers several different advanced solutions, such as:

  • Remote Help:

    This is a tool that will assist the helpdesk, which is particularly useful now with so many employees working remotely and away from the office. Remote Help is already available for Windows users and will also be become available for Android and MAC Endpoints users in future releases.

  • Endpoint Privilege Management:

    This has been added in preview this month and will be fully available next month. It will enable the controlled elevation of Windows Standard users in such a way that social security controls do not get in the way of productivity.

  • Advanced endpoint analytics:

    Data-driven insights that help administrators understand, anticipate and improve the user’s experience.

  • Microsoft Tunnel for Mobile App Management:

    A micro-VPN that connects corporate resources from personal IOS/iPadOS and Android devices to ensure employees have access to company resources from their personal mobile devices.

  • Management of specialty devices:

    Improved management of speciality devices to provide employees with the flexibility to choose the device they need to do their job.

  • Advanced app management:

    This will be added following the launch on March 1st, namely an enterprise app catalog and controls for easy app discovery, deployment and automatic updates.
The Intune Suite is already included in the Product Terms so you can buy this suite now. As it is an add-on to Microsoft Intune, you need one of the plans that include Intune to purchase this suite of additional features.
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2. Microsoft 365 new products

In the Product Terms you can see that the content for Education Insights has been removed as the offer has been depreciated. They have updated the Availability table with two new offers:

  1. Forensic Evidence for Insider Risk Management – an opt-in add-on feature in Insider Risk Management that gives security teams visual insights into potential insider data security incidents, with user privacy built in.
  2. Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management – delivers asset visibility, intelligent assessments, and built-in remediation tools for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and network devices.

The License Prerequisite table lists what you will need to purchase for these two offers in the Microsoft Compliance Suite or Purview Suite. You will need Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance, or Microsoft 365 E5 Insider Risk Management for this new add-on.

For the Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management add-on, you will need either an M365 E5, M365 F5 Security & Compliance, or an F5 Security license, basically any product that contains a Defender Endpoint Plan 2 licenses, Defender for Endpoint for server, or Windows 10/11 Enterprise E5 license (which is mostly a Microsoft Defender Endpoint Plan 2 license).

Other Items

In the Dynamics 365 services, Microsoft has updated all references to Microsoft Relationship Sales Solutions Plus to Relationship Sales to align with the name change. They did this everywhere on the page.

Finally, in the Privacy and Security terms, Microsoft updated the Azure Core Services table to include several new products such as Azure Form Recognizer, Immersive Reader, Metrics Advisor and Azure Red Hat Open Shift.

Interested in more?

That’s it for this month. You can watch more video content on our YouTube channel. 

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