New pricing for Microsoft 365

Sep 8, 2021

Microsoft is announcing changes to the commercial pricing for Microsoft 365—the first substantive pricing update since they’ve launched Office 365 a decade ago.

This updated pricing reflects the increased value Microsoft has delivered to its customers over the past 10 years.

Take a look at some of the innovations they’ve delivered over the past decade in three key areas—communications and collaboration, security and compliance, and AI and automation—as well as the addition of audio conferencing capabilities that they’re announcing today.

A decade of continuous innovation

Since introducing Microsoft 365 they have added 24 apps1 to the suites—Microsoft Teams, Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Stream, Planner, Visio, OneDrive, Yammer, and Whiteboard—and have released over 1,400 new features and capabilities in three key areas.

  →  Communication and collaboration. 

In 2020 Microsoft released over 300 new capabilities including Together mode, background effects, large gallery view, raise a hand, live reactions, breakout rooms, live captions with speaker attribution, and Fluid components, just to name a few.

  • They introduced a new category of collaborative applications in Teams, empowering people and organizations for hybrid work through deep integrations with Power Platform, Whiteboard, Lists, Planner, Shifts, Forms, and SharePoint. Companies like Adobe, Atlassian, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, and Workday have built apps that deeply integrate with Teams, bringing business processes and functions directly into the flow of work.
  • They continue to innovate on both real-time and asynchronous collaboration.
  • They introduced real-time collaboration in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint desktop apps while a growing set of capabilities like @mentions, assign tasks, modern comments, and auto-save have streamlined the collaboration experience.
  • They’ve added and expanded OneDrive cloud storage and the Exchange Online mailboxes.

  →  Security and compliance.

  • The cybersecurity landscape is more complex than ever. With the accelerating volume, sophistication, and scale of cyberattacks, security and compliance are a priority for every organization. Since they first introduced Microsoft 365, they have added new attack surface reduction capabilities to help organizations defend against ransomware and other threats.
  • They have added capabilities like data loss prevention (DLP) for email and documents, sensitivity labels, and message encryption to help keep important data within the organization.
  • They have added powerful compliance capabilities that help organizations reduce risk and respond to increasing regulatory requirements such as Content Search, eDiscovery, and core Litigation Hold. Built-in mobile device management (MDM) and other management tools like Microsoft Endpoint Manager help admins support remote and hybrid workforces.

  →  AI and automation.

  • Over the past decade, they have infused AI capabilities across our productivity and collaboration applications to help everyone achieve more.
  • Across Microsoft 365, they have introduced AI-powered innovations to help users be better writers, designers, and presenters.
  • Cloud-powered AI now automatically creates maps, charts, and tables in Excel, and sorts email and removes clutter in Outlook. And AI-powered real-time translation, captions, and transcription make collaboration and communication more accessible and engaging for everyone.

Extending audio conferencing capabilities

  • Microsoft is announcing that they will add unlimited dial-in capabilities for Microsoft Teams meetings across our enterprise, business, frontline, and government suites over the next few months. Even as cloud connectivity increases, they know that people join Teams meetings while they are on the go or struggling with a bad internet connection.
  • Currently included with Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5, they have come to see dial-in as an important part of the complete Teams experience.
  • Available with subscriptions in over 70 countries and with interactive support in 44 languages and dialects, unlimited dial-in provides peace of mind that users will be able to join their Microsoft Teams meeting from virtually any device regardless of location.

New pricing

  • The pricing changes Microsoft is announcing today will go into effect in six months.
  • On March 1, 2022, they will update our list pricing for the following commercial products: Microsoft 365 Business Basic (from $5 to $6 per user), Microsoft 365 Business Premium (from $20 to $22), Office 365 E1 (from $8 to $10), Office 365 E3 (from $20 to $23), Office 365 E5 (from $35 to $38), and Microsoft 365 E3 (from $32 to $36).
  • These increases will apply globally with local market adjustments for certain regions.
  • There are no changes to pricing for education and consumer products at this time.
  • As leaders around the world look to empower their people for a more flexible, hybrid world of work, it’s clear that every organization will need a new operating model across people, places, and processes. Microsoft is committed to building on the value they’ve delivered over the past decade to continuously provide innovation that helps our customers succeed and thrive today and well into the future.

 

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Contact us to learn more [email protected]

 

Azure VM Updates: Want to reduce software licensing costs without impacting performance?

Nov 18, 2020

Azure adds new constrained vCPUs, capable virtual machines to reduce software licensing costs without impacting performance

Azure offers various VM sizes for which you can constrain the VM vCPU count to reduce the cost of software licensing, while maintaining the same memory, storage, and I/O bandwidth.

This may be crucial for some database workloads like SQL Server or Oracle that require high memory, storage, and I/O bandwidth, but not a high core count since many database workloads are not CPU-intensive.

So, by deploying the latest Azure Virtual Machines, you can further increase the efficiency of your cloud infrastructure.

The vCPU count can be constrained to one half or one quarter of the original VM size. These new VM sizes have a suffix that specifies the number of active vCPUs to make them easier for you to identify.

The Esv4, Edsv4, and Easv4 memory optimized Azure VM series now offer new constrained vCPU VM sizes.

For example, the current VM size ‘’E8s_v4’’ comes with 8 vCPUs, 64 GB RAM, 16 disks and 12,800 IOPs. The new VM sizes ‘’E8-4s_v4’’ and ‘’E8-2s_v4’’ comes with 4 and 2 active vCPUs respectively, while maintaining the rest of the specs of the ‘’E8s_v4’’ for memory, storage, and I/O bandwidth.

The licensing fees charged for SQL Server or Oracle are constrained to the new vCPU count, and other products should be charged based on the new vCPU count. This results in a 50% to 75% increase in the ratio of the VM specs to active (billable) vCPUs. These new VM sizes allow customer workloads to use the same memory, storage, and I/O bandwidth while optimizing their software licensing cost. Currently, the compute cost, which includes OS licensing, remains the same one as the original size.

Microsoft | Windows Server and System Center Core Licensing Update

Sep 28, 2016

server2016

Windows Server 2016 & System Center 2016 will be available in SPLA in October.

Licensing Summary:

  • Per core license model replaces processor license model on October SPUR.
  • Each physical processor needs a minimum of 8 core licenses.
  • Both Windows Server Standard & Datacenter Editions provide support for unlimited Windows Server containers.
  • Windows Server Standard Edition requires all physical cores to be licensed in order to run 1 Windows Hyper-V container (or Virtual Machine).
  • Windows Server Datacenter Edition requires all physical cores to be licensed in order to run unlimited Windows Hyper-V containers (or Virtual Machines).

New Licensing SKU’s:

Part Number Item Name
9EM-00562 WinSvrSTDCore ALNG LicSAPk MVL 2Lic Core
9EA-00039 WinSvrDCCore ALNG LicSAPk MVL 2Lic Core
9EN-00494 SysCtrStdCore ALNG LicSAPk MVL 2Lic Core
9EP-00037 SysCtrDatactrCore ALNG LicSAPk MVL 2Lic
9GA-00006 CISSteStdCore ALNG LicSAPk MVL 2Lic Core
9GS-00495 CISSteDCCore ALNG LicSAPk MVL 2Lic CoreL

Licensing Scenarios:

  • Scenario 1: A physical server with 2 Physical Processors and 4 Cores would require in the new licensing method:

In case of Windows Server Standard:

Part Number Item Name Quantity
9EM-00562 WinSvrSTDCore ALNG LicSAPk MVL 2Lic Core 8

 

In case of Windows Server Datacenter:

Part Number Item Name Quantity
9EA-00039 WinSvrDCCore ALNG LicSAPk MVL 2Lic Core 8

 

  • Scenario 2: A physical server with 2 Physical Processors, 4 Cores and 2 Virtual Machines would require in the new licensing method:

In case of Windows Server Standard:

Part Number Item Name Quantity
9EM-00562 WinSvrSTDCore ALNG LicSAPk MVL 2Lic Core 16

 

In case of Windows Server Datacenter:

Part Number Item Name Quantity
9EA-00039 WinSvrDCCore ALNG LicSAPk MVL 2Lic Core 8
  • Scenario 3: A physical server with 2 Physical Processors and 16 Cores would require in the new licensing method:

In case of Windows Server Standard:

Part Number Item Name Quantity
9EM-00562 WinSvrSTDCore ALNG LicSAPk MVL 2Lic Core 16

In case of Windows Server Datacenter:

Part Number Item Name Quantity
9EA-00039 WinSvrDCCore ALNG LicSAPk MVL 2Lic Core 16

*The total licenses needed is divided by 2 since each reporting SKU covers 2 core licenses

Partners whose Microsoft SPLA Agreement is not yet expired, can still report the Windows Server Per Processor License until the expiry date of their Agreement.