Licensing update May 2023
May is a quiet month on the Microsoft licensing front as everyone at Microsoft is focused on the financial year end. Renewals and new contract deals need to be signed and delivered before the end of June to make this year’s targets.
This month is all about cleaning up the Product Terms:
- Removal of Windows To Go terms. This was discontinued after Windows 10 version 2004 and you can no longer stay up to date with your WTG
- Expansion of the Core Online Services to allow for the rebranding of certain Azure features
- Removal of all promotions as these are no longer active and relevant
- An explanation was added to the Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server clause to state that the ‘Standard or Data centre edition can be used’. Azure Hybrid Benefit is a licensing program that allows customers to use their existing Windows Server licenses to run virtual machines in Azure, thereby reducing their overall cloud costs.
- Microsoft 365 Cross-tenant User Data Migration prerequisites table was updated. Removal of Education (A-) plans, M365 F1 and Microsoft 365 Business plans. As of this month, these licenses do not allow you to purchase this product as an add-on anymore. Microsoft 365 Cross-tenant User Data Migration is a feature that allows administrators to migrate user data between different Microsoft 365 tenants.
- Addition of Microsoft Managed Desktop to the prerequisites table. It requires an M365 E5 license or an M365 E3+Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 license. These are necessary requirements to be able to run the Microsoft Managed Desktop solution
- Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo capabilities Add-on will be added to CSP as of June 1st!
