Licensing Update September 2023

Topics in this blog:

  1. New subscription structure for Microsoft 365 in Europe
  2. Multi-tenant collaboration
  3. Updates to the Product Terms (incl Viva Glint, D365 Customer Insights & a new navigation page)

1. New subscription structure for Microsoft 365 in Europe

Microsoft announced important changes to the way M365 and O365 are licensed in the European Economic Area and Switzerland.

From October 1st, 2023, Microsoft will release a new range of M365 and O365 suites that will not include Teams. Enterprise customers will need to purchase an additional new standalone Teams offering.

This does not impact any Microsoft customers with an active contract but will impact renewing customers. Upon your renewal, you can choose to license any of the below new suites or continue to license the way you are currently licensed.

For new O365 and M365 subscribers (net new customers) the new suites will be the only option. Net new customers will need to purchase two SKUs:

  1. One specific EEA M365 or O365 suite
  2. One new Microsoft Teams EEA license

See pricing changes below:

LicenseQ can help you with M365 pricing

For more information on the M365 price changes, read the formal announcement here.

2. Multi-tenant collaboration

Microsoft released a new Multi-tenant organization option for Cross-tenant collaboration. The new Multi-tenant option provides a lot of value to Microsoft customers who are (a) very decentralized, (b) want to procure under one umbrella (economies of scale) and (c) require the option to collaborate between their different affiliates/organizations. This is a great additional step from Microsoft in Cross-tenant collaboration.

We write extensively on this topic in our monthly newsletter. Subscribe to stay up to date. Please also read the information here.

3. Updates to the Product Terms:

  1. Universal License Terms for Online Services updated with a clause on Distributable code. The Distributable Code clause for software also applies to Online Services and this has now been clarified.
  2. Viva Glint added to the Privacy and Security page under the EU Data Boundary table
  3. Microsoft Viva Sales renamed to Microsoft Sales Copilot
  4. The Dynamics 365 page updated to align with the changes to D365 Marketing and D365 Customer Insights. You can check this month’s video to learn more about this change and if this impacts you! Also keep an eye out for our upcoming blog on this topic. 
  5. New page added called Microsoft Security Portfolio Product Terms Mapping. Apparently, it was difficult to navigate the Product Terms page to find relevant clauses regarding the security and compliance features. This page shows the different products per category (i.e. Defender product lineup, Entra product lineup) and the link to the applicable terms for that product. It’s a useful feature, so check it out here!

 

Thank you for reading our blog and staying up to date. If you have any questions, feel free to drop us a message at info@licenseq.com and one of our experts will be in touch!