Amazon Workspaces — Microsoft 365 License Update
Amazon Workspaces are cloud-based virtual desktops or what is also known as ‘Desktop as a Service.’
Historically, it was always questionable if there were ever rights to deploy Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise or Business within a shared tenancy. It was common for customers to assume that a virtual desktop on Amazon Workspaces counted towards one of the 5 device installs included with Microsoft 365 Apps. This created a situation where many customers were unknowingly in breach of Microsoft licensing product terms leading to possible risk of audit.
Customers of a certain scale and magnitude may have been suitably placed to seek a custom amendment from Microsoft in their Enterprise Agreement. However, the majority of customers were faced with a risk management solution whereby they needed to acquire an Office Suite (not M365 Apps for Enterprise) on a license-included basis from AWS. Using this approach was cumbersome and often resulted in a lack of standardisation and possible duplication of licensing.
Other customers aware of this licensing restriction may have chosen to use competing Microsoft solutions that included more favourable ‘Bring Your Own Licensing’ (BYOL) terms.
In Microsoft’s August Product Terms Update, they included an important announcement that customers should be aware of. Microsoft stated that as of the 1st of August, they are allowing AWS customers to install Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise or Business, as well as Project Visio on Amazon Workspaces.
There are a couple of key points to call out here. First, to bring or to use or install apps for Enterprise or Business on a workspace cloud desktop, there are a couple of prerequisites — you must have one of the following.
· Microsoft 365 E3/E5/A3/A5
· Microsoft 365 Business Premium
This prerequisite for many customers will already be met, however, there will be some customers who have Office 365 and haven’t made that step up to a full Microsoft 365 subscription. If you’re still licensing your Productivity Tools primarily through Office 365 and you haven’t fully licensed with Microsoft 365, obviously that’s going to be a blocker in terms of being able to deploy the software on a workspace virtual desktop.
If you have Project Plan 3 or Project Plan 5 as well as Visio Plan 2, this will also allow you to install Project and Visio on those Amazon Workspaces.
Introducing an additional layer of flexibility in terms of BYOL rights and AWS is an interesting development from Microsoft. It remains to be seen whether we will see similar approaches across other products in the future.
As Microsoft license experts, we can help you demystify these and any other product changes and clarify what this could mean for your license position. Our full post and video on all the August updates can be found here.
If you have any questions relating to this or any other Microsoft licensing matter, please go to our website or contact us.
About the Author:
Karl O’Doherty is a Principal License Consultant here at Version 1.
