Dedicated Host Licensing Favors Azure

• New licensing rules for dedicated hosting favor Azure over competing cloud platforms from Amazon, Google, and Alibaba.
• Customers should evaluate their current workloads and licenses to determine when the changes affect them.

Applying Microsoft software licenses to workloads hosted at Amazon, Google, or Alibaba on equipment dedicated to a customer will, over time, become more expensive or no longer permissible. Upcoming rule changes will eventually affect all customers using dedicated equipment at these vendors to run Windows Server, SQL Server, server-based desktops, and other workloads involving Microsoft software, but the timing and severity of the impacts will vary widely depending on a myriad of product- and customer-specific factors. However, workloads run on Azure Dedicated Host, Microsoft’s upcoming dedicated hardware hosting option, will not be subject to the new constraints.

New Rules for Third-Party Dedicated Hosters

Some service providers offer customers the option to “rent” hardware, typically servers, residing at the service provider’s data center and reserved solely for that customer’s use.