Microsoft News - September 2023

by Maybelline Middleton

Welcome to your monthly roundup of all the latest updates in the world of Microsoft. We’ll run through everything you need to know from critical dates to be aware of, to new product announcements. Check-in on our blog every month to ensure you stay up to date.

Legacy CSP To Expire This Year.

Microsoft have announced that legacy CSP will expire on 31^st December this year. This means that any remaining legacy CSP licenses need to be migrated to NCE by this date.

Microsoft will start migrating legacy CSP to NCE on annual commitment from 1^st January 2024 if no action is taken beforehand.

NCE will expand out to charities and education from 1^st November 2023.

If you are a Bechtle customer, then please look out for emails from our software team on this important announcement to support you in migrating to NCE.

Windows Server 2012 Going EOL Next Month.

Microsoft have confirmed Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 are going end of life 10th October 2023. After this date these versions of Windows Server will stop receiving security and feature updates. This means any server continuing to run this software is open to security breaches and the longer these are left unprotected, the more this risk grows as hackers and malicious actors have more time to compromise and breach the latest patches.

Luckily, there are a few options Bechtle can help you with if you’re not able to upgrade. You can move this workload to Azure and receive free updates for 3 years. We understand this isn’t always possible for legacy workloads so organisations who have an Enterprise Agreement can purchase Extended security updates for 3 years. For organisations not currently on EA you can look at our Trend Micro solution.

If you’re interested in discussing any of the above, please reach out to your account manager to get a discussion booked in with our software team.

Microsoft Teams Rooms Licensing Enforcement Starting 1st October 2023.

Microsoft Teams Rooms Licensing Policy will enforce mandatory Teams Rooms licenses starting 1^st October 2023.

As of 1^st October 2023, Teams Rooms devices, including those using Personal Mode, and the Teams application on Surface Hub and Teams Panels, will be blocked from signing in without a valid Teams Rooms license. You will need to provision and activate either a Teams Rooms Pro or Teams Rooms Basic (max 25 devices), Teams Rooms Premium, Teams Rooms Standard license, or Teams Rooms Shared Device License (panels only) before the deadline.

For Teams Panels, you will need to provision a Teams Shared Device license for accounts where a Teams Panel is deployed to a space where there's no Teams Room or Surface Hub in the room. The policy also includes devices enrolled in the Pro Management portal. A Teams Rooms Pro or Teams Rooms Premium license will be required to take advantage of the AI-powered cross-platform device management capabilities of the Pro Management portal.

Changes to Microsoft 365 and Teams Licensing in Europe.

Changes to Microsoft 365 and Teams licensing in Europe will take effect on 1^st October 2023.

Microsoft is making important changes to the licensing and availability of Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland. They are making these changes in response to feedback from the European Commission (EC).

Starting 1^st October 2023, Microsoft will introduce a new lineup of commercial Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites in the EEA and Switzerland that don't include Teams, and a new standalone Teams offering for Enterprise customers. Existing customers in the EEA and Switzerland who wish to continue using the suites to which they have already subscribed may continue to use, renew, and add seats to their current plans as usual.

This new lineup will do the following:

Introduce new EEA- and Switzerland-specific suites without Teams, which will be named the same as the full suites plus "EEA (no Teams)."
Introduce a new EEA-specific standalone Teams SKU for Enterprise: Microsoft Teams EEA.
End the sale of net-new subscriptions to all existing Enterprise SKUs with Teams (Office 365 E1/E3/E5 and Microsoft 365 E3/E5) in the EEA and Switzerland.
Continue to offer existing SMB and Frontline suites with Teams (Business Basic/Standard/Premium, Microsoft 365 F1, Microsoft 365 F3, and Office 365 F3) alongside the new versions without Teams.

For more information, see the full breakdown of SKU and price changes.

Note: This does not impact the UK.