By Rob O'Shaughnessy, Director, Software Sales & Renewals Enterprise Agreement 1000 User Minimum In an effort to streamline consumption products such as Office 365 (O365), Microsoft 365 (M365), Dynamics 365 (D365) and Azure towards consumption-based licensing programs such as its Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program, Microsoft is making changes to the qualification of their Enterprise Agreement. In January 2021, Microsoft increased the minimum requirement for Enterprise Agreements to 1000 users—a jump from 500 users. This means that customers with fewer than 1000 seats of O365, M365, or D365 will no longer be able to purchase their licensing on an Enterprise Agreement. In addition, Microsoft increased the qualification amount for Azure to $600,000 per year.

UPDATE 12/19 Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 End of Service is fast approaching as Microsoft will end support on January 14, 2020. If you have servers at risk of losing support, you still have time to take action. Microsoft is offering three years of free Extended Security updates for no charge, if you migrate workloads into Azure. If you prefer to stay on-prem, upgrading to Windows 2019 Server is another option, or you take a hybrid cloud approach. Regardless of your choice, GreenPages team of experts is here to help you navigate the best solution for your needs and environment. We can right size your Azure environment if you move to the cloud or assist in understanding what’s needed for licensing and support for on-prem. We’re here to help you make that decision and ensure you're covered for the future. Regardless of what investment you decide to make, GreenPages can help right-size you for the future and ensure your data continues to be protected. To have further conversations about Windows 2008 and 2008 R2 and SQL 2008 and 2008 R2, please connect with your Account Executive or reach out to us!  ORIGINAL POST 7/19  Back in 2008 I still had a faceplate for my car radio, Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis was crushing the pop charts, and organic bean sprouted bread was something you’d find in the pet food aisle. It’s also the year Microsoft released Windows 2008 and SQL 2008, leaving a lasting impression like a tune you can’t get out of your head. For Windows Server 2008, it was the first Windows edition that allowed you to license for virtualization. If you recall, there used to be an Enterprise Edition of Windows 2008 that allowed for 4 VMs and if you needed 12 VMs you had to purchase 3 licenses. Datacenter provided unlimited VMs, and Standard edition both covered standalone and virtual machines.  At the time Microsoft was really making us work to understand the minutia of their licensing rules. Thank goodness Microsoft’s licensing has gotten a lot easier to understand (insert sarcasm.) Windows 2008 and 2008 R2 and SQL 2008 and 2008 R2 had a good run, and like all good things, including Leona Lewis’s career, it will be coming to an end. SQL 2008 and 2008 R2 End of Support (EOS) is July 9, 2019. Windows 2008 and 2008 R2 EOS is January 14, 2020.  Once Microsoft products go EOS, Microsoft offers ZERO support for the product, meaning they’ll no longer provide updates and patching. With no support, it would leave the product vulnerable to security threats because no fixes will be available to prevent infiltration. Security updates are mission critical. In 2016, 4.2 Billion records were stolen by hackers. Twenty percent of organizations lose customers during an attack and 30% of organizations lose revenue during an attach. Not fun!  It would be like if John Rambo retired and stopped drawing blood, which is a bad analogy because Rambo: Last Blood is being released in September. This begs that question, is this really the Last Blood? Probably not, however you can be certain the Microsoft’s “Last Blood” is actually happening. So what to do when your support goes away? Well you’ll need to think about modernizing and in this case adopting cloud. It’s a good time to seize EOS as an opportunity to transform with Microsoft’s latest technologies. A jump to Azure will allow you to migrate your Windows 2008 and 2008 R2 workloads to Azure VM or Azure SQL Database. Customers who move 2008 and 2008 R2 workloads to Azure Virtual Machines (IaaS) “as-is” will have access to Extended Security Updates for both SQL Server and Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 for three years after the End of Support dates for free. Those that decide to move to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance (PaaS) will have access to continuous security updates, as this is a fully managed solution. Or you could stay with on-premises licensing and upgrade to Windows 2019 or SQL Server 2017 by leveraging your Software Assurance benefits to modernize on-premises or on Azure (i.e. Azure Hybrid Benefit), to help reduce security risks and continue to get regular security updates.

Windows 2016 is almost here & there are going to be important changes to note around licensing! Back in 2012, Microsoft came out with a Core-based license model for SQL Server, and you probably thought to yourself, did I leave the iron on, this is going to be a hot mess! I have to count now?  I have to do math? Come on Microsoft, you make licensing more complicated than coding. Well, for some of us, over the past couple of years we’ve sort of become accustomed to the way SQL is licensed. It’s the direction a lot of manufacturers are going. Around the same time, Microsoft also released Window Server 2012. However, instead of being Core-based, Windows Server’s licensing focused on being CPU or Socket-based. Whether you chose Windows Standard or Datacenter, you were required to license all the physical sockets in the host. The main difference between Windows Standard versus Datacenter was how many VMs you received. Windows Standard allowed you to license two VM’s per license and Datacenter jumped to unlimited VMs per license.

VMware’s vSphere ESXi 5.0 and 5.1, which is the hypervisor included in vSphere 5.0 and 5.1, is going to end of support (EOS) this summer. Effective August 24, 2016, VMware will no longer offer General Support for these editions. Basically, this means no phone or email support regardless if you are current on your Subscription and Support (SnS) or not.

VMware announced some changes to its NSX versions a few weeks back and are now actually offering more than one version. Imagine going to Baskin-Robbins and only getting vanilla. Well that had been the case with VMware’s NSX. Now, it won’t be 31 different options of NSX, but there at least will be three. NSX will be available in vanilla, strawberry and chocolate. Whoops, sorry, I mean Standard, Advanced and Enterprise. A better analogy would be Low Fat, 2 Percent and Whole.

This was a popular blog post from 2016. Feel free to read it below; for updated information, visit VMware's pricing page.  VMware dropped some news this week regarding their product and licensing lineup. VMware announced the End-of-Life (EOL) of some familiar friends, slight additions to other products, and increasing and decreasing pricing.  There are a lot of moving parts so sit tight and let me walk you through what’s going on.

We’re coming to the end of the NFL Playoffs. When I wrote the first draft of this post, there were four teams remaining with a chance to make the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, CA. After yesterday’s action, it’s down to two (being a huge Patriots fan this is difficult to swallow).  There is a very good reason why the Patriots, Broncos, Cardinals and Panthers were still remaining heading into yesterday’s conference finals games.  They built teams with solid defenses and offenses, created the perfect schemes to run, pass, and defend, and drafted or brought in the perfect player to fulfill their schemes. These winners did their research. They diagnosed and found out what their needs were and rectified, fixed and solved the issues that may have prevented them from being successful. Teams like the Browns, 49ers, or Chargers did not. Sorry if you’re a fan of one of those teams, but, the reality is, based on their records, these teams likely didn’t make the correct investments to ensure long term success and obtain a return on their investments. They didn’t implement a system to help them understand where their shortfalls were, allowing them to correct them. They made investments on the wrong players (hello Johnny Manziel) and now they are stuck with an underachieving asset.

You probably saw the rumors come across Twitter, Facebook or on the newsstands in a checkout aisle. Perhaps, like me, you never thought it would actually happen, but the day is coming. Grab a tissue, Symantec and Veritas are breaking up. Years ago, Symantec, an anti-virus company, merged with Veritas, a backup company known for such products as Backup Exec and Netbackup forming a super power of sorts. This, however, is changing. Although Symantec and Veritas have been a staple in our lives for many years, starting next month they will be separated.

Deflate-Gate was the topic of conversation the past few weeks. Now that the Patriots are Super Bowl champs we can put this made-up, fake controversy to bed. What isn’t fake, however, is Windows 2003 support ending. What to do with End of Life approaching is a big topic of conversation now. It’s Migrate-Gate! Tick…Tick…Tick. Does this sound familiar? Tick...Tick…Tick…Windows 2003 Servers support is ending. Tick…Tick…Tick 6-months to go and now it’s time to tick...tick…talk about what you need to do.