All posts by Christine Plein

Microsoft Dynamics 365

Microsoft Dynamics 365 licensing changes

Gold Microsoft Partner

Microsoft announced the following changes to the licensing of Dynamics 365, effective October 2019:

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations will be split into two single apps:

  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Supply Chain Management.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is moving from “Plan” to “à la carte” sales motion. Microsoft will remove the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Plans (Dynamics 365 Plan, Customer Engagement Plan and Unified Operations Plan). From October, customers will only buy licenses for the apps that they need. If a user needs to be licensed for multiple apps, then they will buy a Base license for the first app and an Attach license for the additional apps at a significantly discounted price. The functionality of the Base and Attach licenses is identical.

For further information on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 licensing changes, please visit the following Microsoft Inspire site, where you can download the Slide Decks with more information: https://myinspire.microsoft.com/sessions/f28c5f81-51b7-4c8b-9783-872f81439a03 and https://myinspire.microsoft.com/sessions/4fd8babb-edb3-4485-b012-ff6f78253562.

Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft Forms Pro available

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Microsoft announced the General Availability of Microsoft Forms Pro for Microsoft Dynamics 365 customers. Microsoft Forms Pro is a simple to use, yet robust enterprise-survey solution that integrates with Office 365, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform. It’s built on Microsoft Forms for Office 365 with new, advanced survey capabilities to further support business survey solutions, including point-and-click simplicity to create and send custom surveys, integration with your business processes, and AI-assisted features that provide a deep-level of insights across transactional and behavioral data. Continue reading Microsoft Forms Pro available →

Microsoft Dynamics 365

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Voice of the Customer discontinues

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With the release of Microsoft Forms Pro, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Voice of the Customer product. Existing customers will be able to create new surveys up until 1st July 2020, and after that date, survey data will be available and stored in Dynamics 365. For further information, please visit:  https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/bdm/2019/07/01/voice-of-the-customer-deprecation/.

Adobe, Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat 2017 Upgrade eligibility policy change

Adobe-Gold-Reseller

Adobe announced that effective July 1, 2019, upgrade eligibility for Adobe Acrobat perpetual licenses will change from two versions back to one version back.

At that time, the only version eligible for upgrade to Acrobat 2017 will be Acrobat DC 2015. This policy update includes all licensing programs, including Transactional Licensing Program (TLP) and Cumulative License Program (CLP), and will be in effect across all segments (commercial, education, and government).

Microsoft Azure, Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Data Warehouse Reserved Capacity available

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Microsoft Azure Reservations are a way of pre-paying for an Azure resource over a one or three-year term to get the most cost-effective pricing. The Reservations family continues to grow: it started with Reserved Instances, a way of pre-paying for Azure virtual machine base compute, and was extended with Reserved Capacity, a way of pre-paying for Azure SQL Database compute capacity. In 2018, Software Reservations for SUSE Linux software and Reserved Capacity for Azure Cosmos DB throughput were added to the family.

Now the family also includes Microsoft SQL Data Warehouse Reserved Capacity. Microsoft SQL Data Warehouse Reserved Capacity allows customers to buy compute Data Warehouse Units (cDWU) with either 1-year or 3-year options for discounts of up to 65%. Reserved Capacity can be shared by multiple warehouses in the same region and there are exchange and cancel options available if business needs change. Additionally, there are new RedHat Enterprise Linux Software Plans where the rules are stricter in terms of exchanging and cancelling, but discounts of up to 18% are still available.

For further information on Microsoft SQL Data Warehouse Reserved Capacity, please visit https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-sql-data-warehouse-reserved-capacity-and-software-plans-now-generally-available/.

The following link gives you an overview of Reservations and if you expand the “Buy a reservation” link at the left you can get details on the current five members of the Reservations family: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/billing/billing-save-compute-costs-reservations.

Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft Office 365 Multi-Geo Capabilities

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Microsoft Multi-Geo Capabilities for Microsoft Office 365 give customers full control of where their data is stored. Microsoft Multi-Geo Capabilities allow customers to choose different Office 365 data center geographies for their data within Office 365. Data within a single Office 365 tenant can be spread across multiple Office 365 data center geographies on a per-user basis.

Multi-Geo Capabilities in Office 365 are available for Exchange Online and OneDrive, SharePoint Online and Office 365 Groups, allowing customers to address their global data residency needs.

According to the Microsoft Product Terms for June 2019, Microsoft changed the minimum requirements for the Multi-Geo Capabilities in Office 365 from 2500 Office 365 licenses to 500.

For further information on the Microsoft Multi-Geo Capabilities in Office 365, please visit: https://products.office.com/en-us/business/multi-geo-capabilities.

Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud

Microsoft and Oracle interconnect Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud

Microsoft and Oracle

Microsoft and Oracle announced a cloud interoperability partnership enabling customers to migrate and run mission-critical enterprise workloads across Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. Enterprises can now seamlessly connect Azure services, like Analytics and AI, to Oracle Cloud services, like Autonomous Database. By enabling customers to run one part of a workload within Azure and another part of the same workload within the Oracle Cloud, the partnership delivers a highly optimized, best-of-both-clouds experience. Taken together, Azure and Oracle Cloud offer customers a one-stop shop for all the cloud services and applications they need to run their entire business.

For more information on this interoperability partnership, please find the both announcements here:

https://news.microsoft.com/2019/06/05/microsoft-and-oracle-to-interconnect-microsoft-azure-and-oracle-cloud/

https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/microsoft-and-oracle-to-interconnect-microsoft-azure-and-oracle-cloud-060519.html.

 

Oracle Database

Oracle Database 19c available

Oracle-Gold-Partner

Oracle announced the availability of Oracle Database 19c. The final long-term support release of the Oracle Database 12c and 18c family of products is now available on Linux, Solaris, Exadata and LiveSQL.oracle.com platforms. Oracle Database 19c offers customers the best performance, scalability, reliability and security for all their operational and analytical workloads. ‘Long term support’ means that Oracle Database 19c comes with 4 years of premium support and a minimum of 3 years extended support.

For further information on Oracle Database 19c and to download the corresponding White Paper, please visit: https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/.

Microsoft Licensing Terms

Microsoft Licensing Terms documentation

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Microsoft announced that they will change the way they present the Microsoft Licensing Terms documents. The Licensing Terms Site is intended to replace the downloadable document versions of the Microsoft Product Terms (PT) and Microsoft Online Service Terms (OST). The site provides users with improved capabilities, including a dynamic browsing experience, up-to-date content, and improved transparency related to use rights changes. The shift to this web-based experience allows you to filter content and review only the terms and conditions relevant to your needs. Microsoft will publish both the existing downloadable document and website versions of the use rights for a few months to help customers adjust to the new site. The website version of the use rights also includes the ability to export to Microsoft Word.

While the Microsoft Licensing Terms website is still under construction, you can already get a preview under: https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/terms/productoffering. Also, Microsoft has published the following FAQ: http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/5/9/A599711B-6807-4757-B38D-1EE269F2F19B/Product_Terms_FAQ.pdf.

Microsoft 365, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Server

Microsoft FSLogix Licensing

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Microsoft announced the public preview of Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop. Now, all customers can access this service that delivers simplified management, a multi-session Windows 10 experience, optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus, and support for Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktops and apps. With Windows Virtual Desktop, you can deploy and scale your Windows desktops and apps on Azure in minutes and enjoy built-in security.

Continue reading Microsoft FSLogix Licensing →