DOM reports and resources for understanding and Azure licensing considerations, such as the Azure Hybrid Benefit, which allows customers to apply Windows Server and SQL Server licenses with Software Assurance (SA) to reduce the cost of using that software in Azure services.

Latest Rules

Use the DOM Licensing Reference Set wiki to review the latest rules and rights for Azure licensing.

Azure Hybrid Benefit

June 23, 2020

• Microsoft offers on-premises and hosted database offerings that support a variety of data types.
• They include SQL Server and a range of popular open-source products with various degrees of integration.
• Azure offerings provide a central hosted destination for enterprises to a variety of database formats.
• All choices continue to receive investment, updates, and more integration with other Azure services.

• Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server promises substantial cost savings, but effective tracking is required to ensure license compliance and to fully exploit the benefits.
• Several Azure services and tools help track Azure Hybrid Benefit usage, although the tools do not track the on-premises licenses owned by customers.
• Significant custom configuration and other work is typically required for tracking Azure Hybrid Benefit usage.

• Dynamics 365 Operations uses à la carte packaging for applications, add-ons, and other integrated services.
• Mapping user requirements to required licenses is a complex effort that must be maintained to control costs.
• License compliance requires considerable vigilance and manual review to avoid noncompliance issues.

Introduction

Power Apps (formerly PowerApps) is a graphical application development environment for users with little or no programming expertise to create Microsoft Azure-hosted applications that can present data for viewing and editing. For example, Power Apps can perform tasks such as budget tracking and cost estimation. Power Apps could make simple line-of-business applications easier to create and distribute to teams within an organization.

Introduction

Microsoft Teams is an Office 365 service that offers organizations group-based collaboration spaces with persistent chat, voice and video meetings, integrated access to several Office 365 services, and connections to many third-party services. The service will replace Skype for Business Online, which Microsoft intends to retire on July 31, 2021, and is the primary Office 365 service for unified communication, telephony, and team-based collaboration.