Our thoughts on the future of digital innovation and the cloud.
Azure Updates
As of October 1st, 2024, any users signing into the Azure portal, Entra ID or Intune Admin centers will be required to be covered by multi factor authentication. In early 2025 this requirement will also extend to users trying to access any Azure tools. Users with licenses for M365 F3, E3, E5 or Business Premium will have Entra ID Premium already, which includes MFA with conditional access at a minimum so those users will be covered already. There is also Entra ID free level of MFA that can be utilized to address any gaps.
Azure Advisor will no longer show aggregated estimates for savings as of October 1st, 2024. These totals were often misleading as there was significant overlap in the recommendations leading to savings. For example, virtual machines would have both a saving plan and reservation recommendation, which were added together to show a large opportunity to save on compute costs, but both programs cannot be applied at the same time making that total impossible to achieve. Azure Advisor is an excellent resource for Azure Admins to utilize for highlighting cost optimization opportunities, so hopefully this change will lower the overall frustration with Advisor as a tool in general.
Customers with Enterprise Agreements that are using Azure Hybrid Use rights for SQL server core licenses now have the option of centrally managing the licenses that are being used for AHB. This option allows for entering in the agreement information and available cores for Azure to then assist with assigning to appropriate SQL instances in Azure. License renewals are also tracked and the assignments are dropped when the software assurance on the licenses is set to expire, enforcing the licensing to be set up again once renewed. This will reduce compliance risks and ensure that all available SQL cores are assigned efficiently as workloads change. Worth looking into for dynamic azure tenants that change frequently.
D and E Series Virtual Machines have the 6th generation of VMs currently in preview. The new generation of VMs have better performance for a lower cost over similar Dv2 versions. If your environment is running older version of virtual machines, it is recommended to review options to update them. This will also prevent issues when these older versions reach retirement and users are forced to upgrade.
Windows 365 GPU machines and cross region disaster recovery are both now available. The GPU enabled virtual machines were previously only available for end users that applied to be part of the preview program, but now are available for purchase through volume license and CSP agreements. Cross region disaster recovery was also introduced recently as a per user monthly subscription cost that will allow for a copy of the W365 desktop to be created in an idle mode to enable very quick fail over in the event of a regional outage.
End User Licensing Updates
Microsoft has updated the product terms to more clearly define who can be considered an external user. This change will be impactful to customers starting October 1, 2024. As always, license terms and pricing is locked in for the term of the active license subscription or agreement and any of these announced changes will begin to impact the end customer at the time of renewal. For Enterprise Agreement customers, this could be nearly three years if a renewal was just done, and in the case of CSP Agreements, customers with a monthly term on their licensing will be impacted almost immediately. The new definition will refer to users that are not (a) employees of Customer or its Affiliates, (b) contractors or agents that typically work for Customer or its Affiliates for more than 30 hours on average per week, or (c) contractors or agents that typically work onsite for Customer or its Affiliates on each working day.
M365 Archiving Service is now available for archiving SharePoint Sites. The cost of the archive storage is roughly 25% of the cost of additional production level SharePoint storage, making it a much more cost-effective option for sites no longer actively being used. The trick here is that rehydrating the data if it is required by a user after archiving is done for the entire site, and the costs are 3X per GB the cost of additional SharePoint storage, so if 30% of the data is rehydrated annually, this will not be a cost-effective solution.
Entra ID Suite is now generally available, with new workloads to protect identities across the cloud, while accessing SaaS or on-prem applications. If managing and protecting identities has been a concern, this suite is worth investigating. There is very little overlap with the M365 E5 licensing, so this suite would be in addition to the M365 licensing that end users already have. The prerequisite to add this onto is M365 E3/Business Prem or EMS E3. There are also less expensive add on licensing options for front line workers to be added onto M365 F3. $0 trials are currently available for the Entra ID Suite. Due to disappointing adoption rates of Copilot for M365, Microsoft has announced that in October there will be additional options and pop ups for end users to be able to obtain a Copilot license in a self-service motion with their own payment methods. If this is of concern, there are ways to lock down this option from being available for end users, which will instead lead to a notice that they are to contact their IT teams for license requests.
If you have any licensing questions we are here to help. Please contact us and we would be happy to assist.
