#Microsoft Archives -

Use your Microsoft SA Planning Services Soon

Microsoft has announced the phasing out of Planning Services days as a benefit of Software Assurance (SA).

The timeline is:-

31^st January 2020 – Training Vouchers can no longer be converted to Planning Services days.
31^st January 2020 – All Planning Services related to migration to cloud services are retired
1^st February 2021 – SA customers cease accruing additional benefits (days)
31^st May 2021 – Last day to create Planning Services Vouchers
31^st December 2021 – Remaining Planning Services fully retired

URGENT ACTION is required if wish to convert your Training Vouchers to Planning Services days.
URGENT ACTION is required to use your Planning Services days in relation to cloud migration

Planning Services provide deployment planning assistance for On-premises or Hybrid environments with Microsoft Consulting Services or qualified Microsoft partners.

Planning Services are largely focussed on transitioning On-premise workloads, such as Desktop (Office/Microsoft 365 & Windows), Exchange, SharePoint & SQL Server, to Microsoft-hosted or mixed (Hybrid) deployments.

Note: You must pro-actively activate your Planning Services benefit creating a Planning Services Voucher which must be assigned to your Project Manager. This is done via your VLSC and/or MPSA licensing web portals.

Although it will be 2 years before Planning Services are fully retired, we recommend that you consider using your Vouchers soon.

Note, however, that Microsoft has introduced FastTrack to help organisations move to the Cloud.

FastTrack services are delivered by Microsoft employees, Microsoft-approved suppliers and Microsoft-approved partners (“FastTrack specialists”).

There are some specific eligibility criteria such as purchasing a minimum of 150 licenses from the eligible plans.

Customers with eligible subscriptions to Microsoft 365, Office 365, Azure, Dynamics 365 etc can use FastTrack at no additional cost for the life of their subscription.

If you need any assistance, please contact The SAM Club at info@thesamclub.co.uk

For those clients that have an on-going Service Agreement with The SAM Club we will be contacting you to help you claim and manage any outstanding Planning Services benefits, if required.

Also, see our blog on the phasing out of Training Vouchers as a benefit of SA.

Claim your Microsoft SA Training Vouchers Soon

Microsoft has announced the phasing out of Training Vouchers as a benefit of Software Assurance (SA).

It has been replaced by Microsoft Learn which is available to everyone now, is free and self-paced with options for certification.

The timeline is:-

31^st January 2020 – Training Vouchers can no longer be converted to Planning Services days
31^st January 2020 – Azure related training courses removed from catalogue
1^st February 2021 – SA customers cease accruing additional benefits
31^st May 2021 – Last day to claim accrued Training Vouchers
January 2022 – Training Vouchers no longer redeemable

URGENT ACTION is required if wish to convert your Training Vouchers to Planning Services days.
URGENT ACTION is required if you wish to use your Training Vouchers for Azure related courses.

Note 1: Training Vouchers are acquired when you purchase SA on On-premise product licenses such as Windows Server & SQL Server core licenses, as well as purchases of Microsoft 365 From-SA User Subscription licenses. (From-SA indicates a transition from SA for on-premise products such as Client Access License (CAL) Suites).

Note 2: You must pro-actively claim your Training Vouchers via your VLSC and/or MPSA licensing web portals. If you have not done so, we recommend you consider doing so soon. However, note that once created, Training Vouchers are valid for 180 days.

Although it will be 2 years before Training Vouchers are no longer redeemable, we recommend that you use your Vouchers soon as we expect Microsoft Certified Training Centres to start to wind down the number and range of courses offered.

If you need any assistance, please contact The SAM Club at info@thesamclub.co.uk

For those clients that have an on-going Service Agreement with The SAM Club we will be contacting you to help you claim and manage any outstanding Training Vouchers benefits.

Also, see our next blog on the phasing out of Planning Services as a benefit of SA.

Customer journey migrating to Azure and licensing considerations

The SAM Club’s 6th Azure User Group meeting was kindly held at Neon Underwriters, a long-term client of ours based in London. The topic for this meeting was about a customer’s journey migrating to Azure. The SAM Club also presented on some of the licensing considerations that firms need to consider when planning their Azure migration.

Customer journey migrating to Azure event

Azure Licensing

Ian Nicholls from The SAM Club kicked the event off with a presentation on Azure licensing, discussing how Windows Server on premise licenses with SA (Software Assurance) can be used within Azure via the Hybrid Use Benefit. Emphasis was placed on the planning phase when considering moving to Azure and the importance of licensing.

Microsoft use the ‘Group of 8 Rule’ which refers to the number of cores, so a VM (virtual machine) must be licensed for 8 cores minimum. If a Windows Server Standard license for 16 Cores is used within Azure under Hybrid Use Rights, this can be used for a max 2 VM’s (2 x 8 Cores) based on the specification of the VM. The rule for a Standard license is that it can be used for an on-premise server or in Azure but not both. But you get 180 days of concurrent use rights whilst migrating servers.

This rule also applies to Windows Server Datacenter (DC) which seems strange as DC is for unlimited VM’s within a host server on premise. But within Azure there is no concept of a host server. A Datacenter license can be used both on premise & in Azure – based on the Group of 8 rule. So, a 16 Core DC license can be used for a max of 2 VM’s within Azure.

You can also stack licenses so by adding more cores, you can run a VM for 16, 24, 32 cores etc. Savings of up to 40% on VM’s can be seen when using the Azure Hybrid Use benefit.

SQL licensing

The Azure Hybrid Use Rights for SQL Server within Azure only applies to the per core licensing model for SQL Server Standard and Enterprise per core licenses with SA.

SQL Server licenses on the server/CAL model are not applicable for Azure Hybrid Use Rights.

SQL Server Enterprise when used for General Purpose or Hyperscale Service Tiers are entitled to 4 cores for 1 core with SA owned and used. Business Critical or Azure Virtual Machines are only entitled to 1:1 core.

Each VM must be licensed for every core with a minimum of 4 cores per VM.

With migrating to Azure there is also 180 days of concurrent use rights to assist with the process.

BYOL – Bring your Own License

Where software licenses that are owned and used within Azure outside of the Hybrid Use Benefit, such as SQL Server on the Server/CAL model, a License Mobility Verification Form must be completed within 10 days and submitted via the LSP/Reseller.

Azure Dedicated Host

Azure Dedicated Host (DH) is a new service that is currently in preview from 1st August 2019 so has some limitations.

Azure Hybrid User Rights can be used for a Windows Server Datacenter license being applied to the DH for all the cores. A DH can also be used for SQL Server with an Enterprise License also being applied based on the number of cores on the DH.

It is also possible to group DH together, like an on premise ESX farm for example.

The DH addresses compliance requirements by giving the ability to place Azure VMs on a specific & dedicated physical server with host level isolation – no third party VM’s will be placed on your hosts.

With Azure VM’s, Microsoft complete and apply maintenance to the VM’s as required. With Dedicated Host servers, you have the option to defer host maintenance for up to 35 days, thereby gaining full control over the sequence and velocity of the maintenance process. Most maintenance events have little or no impact on your VM’s. But there may be some sensitive workloads where every second of pause could have an impact. You can therefore opt in to a maintenance window for control and to reduce the impact on your service.

Existing Azure VM’s can be moved to Dedicated Hosts and it is our understanding that portal support for this will be available soon.

Pricing

Charged per dedicated host – not VM
No upfront costs
Host price based on:
- VM series (Dsv3 & Esv3 – support for Fsv2 coming soon)
- Hardware Size
- Region
Software Licensing, Storage & Network usage billed separately – no change compared to Azure VM’s
No termination Fees
Reserved Instance are not currently available during the preview phase.

Below are the current Dedicated Host options. It is worth noting, that with an on-premise server running VM’s there are no limitations on the number of VM’s.

With DH there is a limit based on the number of virtual CPUS available:

Azure Dedicated Host options

Updated License Terms:

On 1st October 2019, Microsoft updated their licensing terms for dedicated hosted cloud services.

Due to the emergence of dedicated hosted public cloud services, beginning 1st October 2019 on-premise licenses purchased without software assurance and mobility rights cannot be deployed within the following public cloud providers: Microsoft, Alibaba, Amazon (including VMware Cloud on AWS), and Google. They will be referred to as “Listed Providers.”

These changes don’t apply to other providers and there will be no change to the Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) program or to the License Mobility for Software Assurance benefit, other than to expand this benefit to cover dedicated hosted cloud services.

Farrer & Co LLP: Journey to the Azure Cloud

Neil Davison IT Director at Farrer explained, signing an agreement with Net Documents in 2013/14 was Farrer’s first toe in the water with their journey to the cloud. Farrer were one of the first law firms to move their infrastructure to the cloud, which was considered due to aging technology during a review of their infrastructure. There were server room issues, cabling issues and technology nearing end of life, so a full replace was needed. Dell worked with Farrer on a review strategy roadmap so they could consider replacing their on-premise infrastructure, versus Private and Public Cloud options. When this was presented to the board it was clear that Public cloud offered the best solution.

Any security issues that the board raised were addressed by Microsoft’s trust center and they found this resource invaluable in helping convince the board to approve the project. In 2016 the project was approved, so Farrer set about finding the right partner to help them with help from Microsoft. After tendering to 4 partners, SystemsUp were chosen and they led Farrer through every aspect of the migration.

The planning phase took 14 months and their infrastructure was mapped so they could see what was in place and which systems linked to each other. From here a migration plan was formulated and as the integration between systems was crucial, the decision was taken to move everything to Azure at the same time.

Security

Microsoft offers a very high level of security, but it is still a shared responsibility. So, Farrer had to put a plan in place for security on servers and patching, mapping against CIS benchmarks – which is run by Microsoft and advises on measures to take to help improve your company’s security score.

A high-profile client did an audit at Farrer and security was a high concern all round, but Azure was not the concern, most questions were around the Net Documents software with Azure being a tick box exercise.

Farrer backfilled their infrastructure team and utilised SystemsUp to upskill the team so that they had in house knowledge once the project was completed.

Farrer have other security products in place aside from Microsoft’s; currently on the Microsoft M365 E3 plan they use products from Checkpoint and Tenable.io to complement their security and are considering moving to Microsoft M365 E5 next year.

Testing

Testing took thousands of hours and they had a team test the migration plan before it was executed live. Some of the systems were 20 plus years old so some latency was picked up. The decision was made to use the Amsterdam datacentre as this is one of the first locations to receive updates with London being the second datacentre location.

Changes did happen during the migration with updates from Microsoft coming through regularly in Azure, but SystemsUp understood Farrer’s environment and were able to adapt accordingly. A question was raised in the room about how this new adoption of technology is being received within the law firm. There is always resistance to change but that is the nature of the world we live in now and technology is becoming more of a competitive edge for law firms to have over the competition.

There is a testing group in place at Farrer who meet every 6 weeks to review changes and decisions made on which updates to implement.

Changes internally

The infrastructure team at Farrer have changed the way they work, and the team have reskilled using resources such as the Microsoft Enterprise Skills initiative for support and training. They are more focused on being proactive and looking at what’s coming; which makes them more agile and able to leverage new technologies such as AI.

Farrer see Azure as much more than a lift and shift and feel they have only touched the surface of what is possible in Azure. Re-platforming of systems is taking place now and considering other cloud services.

Since migrating their entire infrastructure to Azure and using Microsoft 365 Farrer have had 100% uptime.

Regarding Business continuity Farrer have completed fail over testing for a week with the London Datacenter being used during the DR (Disaster Recovery) period which ran as good as the live environment. Remote working is enabled through a Checkpoint VPN providing direct access with an always on VPN connection.

The next step for Farrer is a review of the infrastructure and costings, they have some servers on Reserved Instances (RI) now and they review them quarterly with SystemsUp.

Additional resources

Microsoft have a Fast Track Service team for Azure which is available based on eligibility.

Discussion on next topic and host

Ideas for the next meeting topic were:

Azure Sentinel demo and security discussion
Dictalogic demo (an alternative to BigHand)

The date and location are to be confirmed.

You can find blog articles from our previous events here:
Azure User Group meeting
Azure User Group meeting 2 Dev /Test
Azure User Group meeting 3 Security & Compliance
Azure AI Chatbots is the hype justified?
Microsoft Cloud Economics Assessment

Microsoft announce the special Office Professional plus installation rights will remain

Microsoft announce that they will not now remove the special Office Professional Plus installation rights that customers are currently entitled to with Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 From SA licences. The current rights are detailed on page 54 of the May 2019 Product Terms, and this announcement confirms that the rights are here to stay rather than being removed after 1st August 2019.

The SAM Club can help you understand your licensing position, document and maintain your software assets and help with new technology planning and renewals. Find out more.

Azure DevTest – SAM Club Azure User Group meeting 2

Azure DevTest was the topic of the 2nd SAM Club Azure User Group meeting, that was held this month at one of our clients who kindly hosted in a central London location. The number of clients attending increased and all those in attendance agreed that the discussions are useful and interesting.

Microsoft started the meeting with a ‘hot off the press’ announcement that Azure can now be purchased direct from Microsoft. The Azure price will be based on the US$ exchange rate which will be set at the beginning of each month with Microsoft making a commitment to not make a profit on exchange rates. The benefits were discussed around flexibility of billing and being able to move away from the ‘use it or lose it’ format of the minimum monthly commit, Azure SCE agreements.

Organisations using Azure can still purchase via their preferred reseller also.

Microsoft talked about the Cloud 9 portal which was recently acquired and how this can help analyse usage.

Azure DevTest – Test and Development in Azure

The discussion then focused around the agreed topic of Azure DevTest environments which tends to be a popular starting point for moving to Azure.
Open discussion between our clients identified some of the issues they have with their developers and managing their needs.

Some of the key points were:

Understanding of the developer’s specific requirements
Backups and ability to spin up new systems quickly with the latest copy of the live system
Balancing overheads for storage requirements
Development teams always want more space/resource which can’t always be provided easily or quickly
Number of people working on an app at the same time
Visual Studio license credits being allocated to an individual, there is a need to pool for a team of developers
Controlling costs, how can IT heads manage developers spend in Azure
Access required to full dataset / data security – where is the data?

Some benefits Microsoft highlighted around Azure Test and Development labs:

Ability to set spending thresholds and set up alerts at spending levels and the ability to turn an environment off when required
Central reporting
Multitenanted so multiple users can run apps at the same time
Pool Visual Studio credit into test and development labs
Complete cost management control – can set a period of the day developers can access
Allows Dev teams to spin up new environments when required quickly

Microsoft talked about their client Centrica who have been using Azure test and development.

Azure DevTest quote Centrica

Azure App Service

The Azure App Service was briefly discussed as an option for clients to move apps from on-premise to cloud and deploy web/mobile/API apps.
The issue around some of the legal vendors not being on board with cloud was raised with clients as a blocker to this. In house apps could be used within this service.

Chatbots

Microsoft discussed running use cases with Microsoft technical teams to use chatbots within Azure to help fee earners. Azure cognitive services could help potentially analyse initial case communications to drive efficiency with ability to search precedence library as an example.

Azure Infrastructure Cost Analysis

Microsoft mentioned that they provide funding for full infrastructure scans using a Movere – described as a MAP Toolkit on steroids. The scan is run for a minimum of 2 weeks up to a month and aligns all apps and infrastructure to a cost in Azure.

Taking a high-level lift and shift exercise considering existing licenses i.e. SA for Hybrid Use Rights can save up to 70% of the costs.

Calculating the compute for 1 or 3 years for always on production applications and using Reserved Instances will also help to reduce costs.

The next meeting

As security and data breach keeps coming up in discussions around cloud it was decided that for the next meeting we invite Stuart Aston, who is Microsoft National Security Officer along to share Microsoft’s stance on security and compliance. All attendees will provide their list of questions for Stuart before the meeting so that they can be addressed. If you are interested in attending the next meeting, which is being held on 9th April, in London then please get in touch for further information.

You can find out more about previous SAM Club Azure User Group meetings in our blog post here and subscribe to our blog updates.

Azure User Group Meeting

The SAM Club’s first Azure User Group Meeting was held at Microsoft, 2 Kingdom Street, Paddington, London, W2 6BD on Thursday 24th January 2019 with several of our clients in attendance.
Azure User Group event - The SAM Club
The objective of the Azure User Group is to help educate and provide a means of communication with Microsoft and peers on the Azure Infrastructure solution.

Microsoft started off talking through some use cases of Legal Services clients who have made a transition to Azure – including Taylor Wessing, Farrer and other clients who cannot be named.

Another firm was mentioned but is to remain anonymous, who run their production workload on-premise, but are using AI to get better insight into identifying fraudulent claims. AI augments work in the middle office to flag claims that could be fraudulent based on intelligent analytics. They have already flagged over 100 cases using the technology.
Azure User Group attendees - The SAM Club
Open discussions followed which touched on the following subjects:

Security

A big concern amongst the Legal firms; was Client and Personal confidential data in the Public Cloud & Security.

Microsoft discussed the level of security in their datacentres from a physical aspect, the datacentres are protected to military levels and are not found on maps. Any visitors to the datacentres are checked out and all electronic devices are taken from them before they can enter. All data held within the datacentres is anonymised, so no member of staff could identify which data set belongs to which organisation.

Compliance

Legal firms are regularly audited by their biggest clients, particularly big banks which may be using Azure themselves. However, the compliance teams don’t understand Azure and want to be able to see and access the data.

A point was raised to Microsoft to educate the Compliance industry – Microsoft do have a large list of compliance accreditations and can discuss compliance organisations such as SOX, SRA & Banks.
Partners in legal firms are more concerned about where data resides and if something goes wrong; it is their reputation on the line.

Resilience

It was mentioned that Azure and Office 365 does take away control with getting the infrastructure back up if there are outages. But there is nothing the IT team can do and feel powerless. With a new site going live it can leave confidence a bit shaky. There needs to be more detailed information available from Microsoft in these situations to help manage expectations.

Microsoft mentioned that they replicate an organisations server in the cloud two times to ensure resilience.

Blockers

Microsoft advised that they are actively working with vendors to ensure their applications are available and can be run within the Public Cloud.

Auto scaling and Optimisation of VMs in Azure

Optimisation of workloads was not seen as a big concern for legal firms as they don’t have a ‘Black Friday effect’ sometimes there is a slow down in app performance if a SQL report is run and fee earners all launch an app at the same time. Microsoft talked about daily peaks and troughs in app usage and possible savings Azure can offer in working out compute costs.

The next meeting

The Azure User Group attendees agreed that the discussions were informative and would like to continue monthly initially. The next agenda topic was agreed to focus on Test and Development environments and the benefits of Azure.

Here are some testimonials from the event
“Great kick off to the Azure User Group. Found it very insightful. Looking forward to the next one and hopefully using the sessions to assist us with our thought process for moving to Azure. Looking forward to the next meeting.”

“I found the Azure User Group meeting extremely useful, as it was good to meet up and discuss with fellow counterparts in other organisations that are in similar positions and are able to share their experiences. Also, being able to provide feedback to Microsoft face to face and how they can help was also very beneficial. Can’t wait for the next one”

If you have not already subscribed to our blog subscribe here to keep up to date with the Azure User Group updates and if you are interested in attending please get in touch.

Microsoft announce the release of Exchange Server 2019, Skype for Business Server 2019, SharePoint Server 2019, and Project Server 2019

Microsoft Exchange Server 2019, Skype for Business Server 2019, SharePoint Server 2019, and Project Server 2019 are all now available to commercial customers. The products can now be downloaded from the Volume Licensing Service Center or the Business Center (MPSA)

Some of the new features are listed below for these Servers, with links to more detailed release pages for each product.

Exchange Server 2019

Exchange Server 2019 includes scale and performance enhancements, new and improved search powered by Bing technology, new options to restrict the forwarding of meeting requests, and increased control over “out of office” settings.

Skype for Business Server 2019

Skype for Business Server 2019 provides on-premises and hybrid customers with additional security, quality, and performance features to improve the hybrid scenario. New features include Cloud Voicemail, Cloud Call Data Connector, Streamlined Migration to Teams, and support for TLS 1.2.

SharePoint Server 2019

SharePoint Server 2019 brings the ease of use of SharePoint Online to on-premises customers. For end users, the new release delivers modern libraries, lists, and communication sites. IT professionals will see improved performance and scale with simplified management. And developers will now be able to build for both cloud and on-premise environments with deeper SharePoint Framework integration.

Project Server 2019

Project Server 2019 offers a robust end-to-end project and portfolio management solution, with strong collaboration capabilities powered by SharePoint Server 2019. Updates include enhancements to performance and scalability, improved reporting, and an expanded set of APIs.

The licensing models remain the same but please get in touch if you would like to understand more about your licensing options.

You can read about other recent releases from Microsoft for Office 2019 and Windows Server 2019 on our blog.

Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Office-2019-servers-available-for-commercial-customers/ba-p/275879

Microsoft launch Microsoft Learn portal

As of 1st of November 2018 Microsoft will retire the E-Learning Software Assurance benefit and replace it with a brand new free portal called Microsoft Learn.

For any customers currently using the E-Learning portal through Software Assurance please be aware that as of the 1st November the portal and all content will be retired so there will be no access to current courses, transcripts, completion certificates and admin tools. It is advised that you compete any courses and download transcripts and course completion certificates before 1st November.

Customers will now be directed to the new Microsoft Learn website where there are some courses for Azure and new Dynamics 365, Power BI, PowerApps, and Microsoft Flow courses today and will expand over the next year.

You can read the announcement and advice from Microsoft here.

Microsoft release Office 2019 for Windows and Mac

Microsoft has announced the availability of Office 2019. If you have active Software Assurance (SA) cover on your Office products, as of the General Availability date of 24th September 2018 then you are entitled to this new release.

Licensing Office 2019 through the Volume Licensing Programs remains the same as Office 2016 Standard and Professional Plus per device licenses. However, it will be about 10% more expensive due to the October price rise.

If you purchase new licenses from now onwards, you will be entitled to use them at the 2019 release even though you might install them at an earlier release, such as Office 2013 or 2016, under downgrade rights.

Office 2019 provides enhancements to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Project, Visio, Access, and Publisher for customers who can’t be cloud-connected or receive regular updates.

The new enhancements are a subset of a long list of features that have been added to Office 365 ProPlus over the last three years.

Office 2019 is a one-time release and won’t receive future feature updates so we don’t see any point in customers maintaining active Software Assurance (SA) in order to solely receive new releases. (However, there are other benefits of SA such as Roaming Use Rights, and options to acquire a “From SA” USL (User Subscription License) if moving to an Office 365 / Microsoft 365 E3/E5 plan if all your organisation’s Office licenses have active SA.

The announcement page has some useful links to FAQs on both the new features and the new technology to deploy it – Click-to-Run. There’s also confirmation that Exchange Server 2019, Skype for Business Server 2019, SharePoint Server 2019, and Project Server 2019 will be released in the coming weeks.

Microsoft will continue to add new features to Office 365 ProPlus monthly, including innovations in collaboration, artificial intelligence (AI), security, and more.

Microsoft’s focus for Office going forward is Office 365, but they state that “We see the on-premises version of Office as an important part of our commitment to give customers the flexibility they need to move to the cloud at their own pace”.

Microsoft will cease Extended Support for Office 2019 in 2029 so we expect them to be pushing all customers to Office 365 by then.

To discuss the best licensing options to upgrade to Office 2019 or if you are considering making the move to Office 365 please get in touch so we can help you choose the best licensing option for your organisation.

Have a look at our recent blog article about the release of Microsoft Windows Server 2019.

Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2018/09/24/office-2019-is-now-available-for-windows-and-mac/

Do you know if your Microsoft licenses are fully compliant?

Microsoft licensing rules are always changing and there are a lot of considerations for IT Heads managing licensing within their organisation.

Have licenses been installed correctly? If not you could have a compliance issue and should your organisation get audited then issues like this can be costly.

Do you have Microsoft licenses where the Software Assurance is coming up for renewal? If so, are you taking advantage of any license grants I.e. Windows Server 2016 per processor to per core licensing change.

Do you know which volume licensing program is the best fit for your organisation? Microsoft licensing can be a minefield, with the change in license rules and the many license programs that are available i.e. CSP, MPSA, EA, SCE etc.

Would your organisation benefit from an independent review? We can discuss your requirements with you, identify any potential compliance issues and help identify the right Microsoft licenses and programs for discussion with your license reseller.

We provide an independent software asset management (SAM) service to assist Heads of IT manage their software licensing. Our services include a Standard SAM service and a Compliance program that can be tailored to your needs.