Cloudy Future for Microsoft Servers at AWS and Google

• Customers running Windows Server or SQL Server on dedicated hardware in Amazon, Google, or Alibaba will face increasing license compliance challenges.
• As older versions age out of support, customers will have fewer options available to them and must pay premium rental prices or switch to Azure.
• This issue affects almost all Microsoft products, but Windows Server and SQL Server are likely the most heavily impacted.

Licensing changes that Microsoft put into place in Oct. 2019 will soon affect all customers running Microsoft products on dedicated hosts at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Alibaba. While customers can continue to run older products on those clouds under the old rules for the foreseeable future, license compliance is likely to become more challenging over time. As the older product versions approach a support sunset over the next several years, customers will need to upgrade carefully, as a migration to a newer version that requires new licenses will also trigger the new rules—requiring them to license these products on a more costly pay-as-you-go (PAYG) basis or move to Azure.