These 4 pillars represent the main value proposition for what differentiates Azure from the competition.

Those are the reasons why customers choose Microsoft, because of the unique value that we provide in a productive, hybrid, intelligent, and trusted cloud.

This capability helps all Azure infrastructure customers avoid the hassle of separately configuring DR across regions (or zones) after the creation of VMs.

Microsoft recognizes that as the customers move and more business-critical applications to Azure, their resilience is of prime importance.

ASR is a key pillar of Microsoft’s resiliency offering, which allows customers to protect their Azure VMs against regional outages.

Previously, there was no seamless way to enable ASR during the creation of a VM. End customers had to follow through and execute a different workflow to protect the VM from regional (or zonal) outages after the VM was up and running.

With Microsoft latest release, now all end customers will be able to enable ASR while creating a VM. ASR will be one of the VM Management options alongside the ones currently available for configuration – Monitoring, Identity, and Backup, among others.

To get started, a customer can simply head over to the Azure portal. Go to ‘Virtual machines’ and click on ‘+ Add’. Go to the Management tab and select ‘Enable Disaster Recovery’ under ‘Site Recovery’. Make the relevant selections and proceed to create Azure VM. Once the VM is created, replication will be automatically enabled within a few minutes.

It shall be noted that so far, this offering is currently limited to Windows VMs and CentOS, Oracle Linux, and Red Hat Linux VMs. Microsoft also do not support zone to zone (in region) disaster recovery through the Create VM workflow currently.

Enterprise SKUs:

• Office 365 E1 is increasing from $8 to $10 per user per month (PUPM)
• Office 365 E3 is increasing from $20 to $23 PUPM
• Microsoft 365 E3 is increasing from $32 to $36 PUPM
• Office 365 E5 is increasing from $35 to $38 PUPM

SMB SKUs:

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic is increasing from $5 to $6 PUPM
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium is increasing from $20 to $22 PUPM

NOTE: Prices for Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, and Frontline SKUs will not change in the meantime. These price changes will impact all public sector customers worldwide while purchasing channels for nonprofit solutions are not changing at this time.

Dive into the New Commerce Experience

In 2019, Microsoft launched the New Commerce Experience (NCE) for Azure as a seat-based offer in the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), a long-term investment, and a new way resellers and MSPs can transact with Microsoft. This program intends to:

• Simplify the licensing process
• Reduce long-term costs
• Offer pricing protection to resellers & MSPs
• Improve and streamline the customer’s purchase and management of Microsoft products

Microsoft has expanded NCE to include Power Platform, Windows 365, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365. These products will be available for purchase in the new commerce experience starting in January 2022.

Our resellers & MSPs will get the best benefits

MSPs and resellers will be able to manage their clients’ subscriptions consistently and safely in one cloud. Through efficient integration, NCE promises adaptability of existing and new products, availability of add-ons as external services, and updated APIs for easy-flowing communication between applications and networks. The new commerce platform helps resellers and MSP increase their sales in a more simplified way and build their client database through value-added services to grow and connect effectively. Besides, it minimizes the risk of having customers that don’t commit to a long-term subscription or can’t benefit from a monthly agreement. With this program, revenue forecasts will be more accurate, alleviating the impact of long-term subscription revocations. As a Microsoft indirect provider & distributor, we at BPS want to ensure the best cloud solutions for our MSPs and resellers, offering them smoother purchase and licensing processes that save them time and money in the long term and position them for future growth.

What terms you should consider

To help our resellers migrate their Microsoft licenses from the CSP and other programs to NCE, we are ready to guide them and offer new advantages and promotions that this migration and integration will bring with it.  Our NCE launch will be on January 11th, 2022. Be an early bird to benefit from all the amenities this new program will offer because starting March 2022, its products and service prices will go up. Additionally, the yearly plan will have a competitive pricing.  It’s your turn now. Migrate to the new commerce platform and expand your systems across the market as a leading company or provider to your customers. With NCE, purchasing, managing, and connecting Microsoft platforms has never been easier.

This is your opportunity to migrate your subscriptions to the cloud with less time and resource wastage. Contact us by filling out this form, and we’ll be more than happy to help you with your process.

This updated pricing reflects the increased value Microsoft has delivered to its customers over the past 10 years.

Take a look at some of the innovations they’ve delivered over the past decade in three key areas—communications and collaboration, security and compliance, and AI and automation—as well as the addition of audio conferencing capabilities that they’re announcing today.

A decade of continuous innovation

Since introducing Microsoft 365 they have added 24 apps1 to the suites—Microsoft Teams, Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Stream, Planner, Visio, OneDrive, Yammer, and Whiteboard—and have released over 1,400 new features and capabilities in three key areas.

  →  Communication and collaboration. 

In 2020 Microsoft released over 300 new capabilities including Together mode, background effects, large gallery view, raise a hand, live reactions, breakout rooms, live captions with speaker attribution, and Fluid components, just to name a few.

• They introduced a new category of collaborative applications in Teams, empowering people and organizations for hybrid work through deep integrations with Power Platform, Whiteboard, Lists, Planner, Shifts, Forms, and SharePoint. Companies like Adobe, Atlassian, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, and Workday have built apps that deeply integrate with Teams, bringing business processes and functions directly into the flow of work.
• They continue to innovate on both real-time and asynchronous collaboration.
• They introduced real-time collaboration in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint desktop apps while a growing set of capabilities like @mentions, assign tasks, modern comments, and auto-save have streamlined the collaboration experience.
• They’ve added and expanded OneDrive cloud storage and the Exchange Online mailboxes.

  →  Security and compliance.

• The cybersecurity landscape is more complex than ever. With the accelerating volume, sophistication, and scale of cyberattacks, security and compliance are a priority for every organization. Since they first introduced Microsoft 365, they have added new attack surface reduction capabilities to help organizations defend against ransomware and other threats.
• They have added capabilities like data loss prevention (DLP) for email and documents, sensitivity labels, and message encryption to help keep important data within the organization.
• They have added powerful compliance capabilities that help organizations reduce risk and respond to increasing regulatory requirements such as Content Search, eDiscovery, and core Litigation Hold. Built-in mobile device management (MDM) and other management tools like Microsoft Endpoint Manager help admins support remote and hybrid workforces.

  →  AI and automation.

• Over the past decade, they have infused AI capabilities across our productivity and collaboration applications to help everyone achieve more.
• Across Microsoft 365, they have introduced AI-powered innovations to help users be better writers, designers, and presenters.
• Cloud-powered AI now automatically creates maps, charts, and tables in Excel, and sorts email and removes clutter in Outlook. And AI-powered real-time translation, captions, and transcription make collaboration and communication more accessible and engaging for everyone.

Extending audio conferencing capabilities

• Microsoft is announcing that they will add unlimited dial-in capabilities for Microsoft Teams meetings across our enterprise, business, frontline, and government suites over the next few months. Even as cloud connectivity increases, they know that people join Teams meetings while they are on the go or struggling with a bad internet connection.
• Currently included with Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5, they have come to see dial-in as an important part of the complete Teams experience.
• Available with subscriptions in over 70 countries and with interactive support in 44 languages and dialects, unlimited dial-in provides peace of mind that users will be able to join their Microsoft Teams meeting from virtually any device regardless of location.

New pricing

• The pricing changes Microsoft is announcing today will go into effect in six months.
• On March 1, 2022, they will update our list pricing for the following commercial products: Microsoft 365 Business Basic (from $5 to $6 per user), Microsoft 365 Business Premium (from $20 to $22), Office 365 E1 (from $8 to $10), Office 365 E3 (from $20 to $23), Office 365 E5 (from $35 to $38), and Microsoft 365 E3 (from $32 to $36).
• These increases will apply globally with local market adjustments for certain regions.
• There are no changes to pricing for education and consumer products at this time.
• As leaders around the world look to empower their people for a more flexible, hybrid world of work, it’s clear that every organization will need a new operating model across people, places, and processes. Microsoft is committed to building on the value they’ve delivered over the past decade to continuously provide innovation that helps our customers succeed and thrive today and well into the future.

Click to learn more

Contact us to learn more team@bpsme.com

In this white paper, you’ll learn:

• Top considerations when preparing to migrate Teams to a new Microsoft 365 tenant.
• What is migrated and what is not.
• Important tips for configuring Teams migration projects.

Download the white paper to power your next Teams migration.

Brought to you by BitTitan®. Helping you make your migrations easy, fast, and secure.

The Tenant Migration Bundle is a promotional per-user bundle for all people and data in your cross-tenant migration project. Much like our User Migration Bundle, which covers multiple workloads for a single user in a project, the Tenant Migration Bundle covers data stored in Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams – the most commonly-used applications in this cloud office suite.

Rather than buy separate licenses for each workload – or use different tools entirely – we’re giving customers the power to move all components of a tenant with a single license. No professional services, additional fees, or special certifications are required.

The TMB is comprised of two components:

• User Migration Bundle: this is their most popular SKU covering mailboxes, documents, personal archives, and enables the use of DeploymentPro, our automated Outlook configuration tool, to flip profiles post-migration.
• Flex Collaboration License: this new license from BitTitan enabling you to move Teams or SharePoint data.

The User Migration Bundles can be applied as they always have to cover mailbox and OneDrive data with no data limit. The new Flex Collaboration license can be applied to either a Teams migration or a SharePoint document library, carrying a 100 GB data limit per license.

Why buy the Tenant Migration Bundle?

It comes down to simplicity. In most scenarios, the Tenant Migration Bundle will have everything a user needs to migrate from A to B. Just like the tool itself, they want to make it easy to move between tenants. Providing a single license for all workloads in the project – and a tool that can support it all – is the best way to lower the training curve, cost, and complexity with these sorts of projects.

This is a new license type so don’t hesitate to get in touch with our sales team to help scope your next project on team@bpsme.com

Read the full study

Take a guided tour to see how Dynamics 365 Business Central helps you:

• Adapt faster using flexible deployment options and innovative solutions that allow you to migrate to the cloud with confidence.
• Work smarter with connectivity between Office 365, Teams, and your business systems to improve productivity across the board.

Perform better through increased business visibility and knowledge-sharing with anytime, anywhere access.

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic turned out to be a test case for the ability to accomplish cloud migrations on tightly compressed schedules. While some scheduled migrations were pushed back, others were suddenly placed on the front burner. Notably, state and local governments which had been among the slowest to adopt the cloud were now faced with work-from-home mandates while still expected to deliver key public services. IT departments, already dealing with disrupted operations, were pressured to implement work-from-home arrangements and needed to be in the cloud immediately. Files in on-premises network drives and other assets located behind the firewall needed to be made accessible. Telephone systems needed to be reconfigured to forward calls.

A call to arms — and managed service providers

Organizations needing to cloudify in short order turned to trusted managed service providers with the specialized knowledge to handle migrating key applications and workloads to the cloud. What many discovered is that thanks to online tools, the essential infrastructure to enable a secure remote work plan could be in place, migrated to the cloud on a compressed timeline, and without compromising continuity of services. Part of this success was due to the prevalence of office suites, with their multiple tools for productivity, shared file storage and collaboration.

Lessons learned from experience

The experience gained applies to any IT organization or MSP needing to pull off a critical migration in short order. One challenge to take into account is the demand placed on the cloud infrastructure. During the pandemic, with so many organizations doing remote work, the immense scalability of the cloud came to the test, and for the most part it shined. However, especially as use of online file stores such as SharePoint Online and OneDrive skyrocketed, Microsoft and Google throttled traffic, especially during peak business hours and some migrations ran into capacity issues and took longer than expected.

Since the tools are themselves in the cloud, in many instances the entire migration task could be performed without an onsite visit — a key advantage given stay-at-home mandates. If the IP addresses (or URLs) and administrative credentials are known, the entire process can complete remotely. Migrating an entire workforce to the cloud for basic collaboration, using email and applications such as Teams or Skype, can be accomplished in anywhere from 24 hours to a long weekend. With careful pre-planning and consideration to details, organizations are able to shift to remote work without missing a beat. The details include:

• Migrating emails first to keep the lines of communication open
• Using date ranges to migrate the most-essential emails selectively
• Paying careful attention to data volume during the migration to avoid overusing bandwith, which could trigger throttling by Microsoft or Google

Provided the number of users, size of the mailboxes and total volume of data are not overly large, an organization can be ready for remote working with a new cloud instance in a long weekend. The rest of the migration can follow in the days after, backfilling the email boxes with the balance of the emails. Migration of less-essential files in online stores can take advantage of off-peak hours and weekends when throttling is less of an issue.

Mission accomplished — with more to come

The good news is, once the migration is complete, organizations are in a much better position to effect digital transformation for other key processes, and position themselves for the long term future of remote work