SAMexpert - Independent Microsoft Spend Specialists

Azure Arc-enabled SQL billing lets SPLA providers report SQL Server usage by the hour and pay only for what runs, instead of the fixed monthly licence cost. Adoption across providers has been mixed. Some are running it in production. Some are planning to move to it next year. Plenty have looked at it and stayed where they are. For some, it doesn't apply. Where are you on Azure Arc-enabled SQL billing? Vote below. #Microsoft #Licensing #Azure #SAMexpert

Microsoft is retiring all four standalone SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business plans. If you use SharePoint Online Plan 1 or Plan 2, or OneDrive for Business Plan 1 or Plan 2, this affects you. No new customers after 31 May 2026. No renewals after January 2027. Service ends in December 2029. You are losing cheap storage at $5 to $10 per user per month. The old OneDrive for Business Plan 2 "Unlimited" tier, in practice 1 TB to 5 TB to 25 TB, is gone. Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 give 1 TB expandable to 5 TB only. Nothing replaces the old allocation. Microsoft named three alternatives: Microsoft 365 suites, capacity packs, and pay-as-you-go storage. Only the suites have published pricing. Four months on, capacity packs and pay-as-you-go remain undefined. The frontline worker problem is real. F1 and F3 give just 2 GB of OneDrive per user. Many bought standalone OneDrive for Business Plan 1 as a cheap way to fix that. For 1,000 frontline workers at post-July 2026 prices: F3 plus ODB Plan 1 is $15,000 a month, Office 365 E1 is $10,000, Microsoft 365 E3 is $39,000. E1 is cheapest and lifts storage to 1 TB, but drops Intune, the Windows licence, Entra ID P1, and Azure Information Protection. Microsoft stops selling on 31 May 2026, yet two of its three named alternatives still do not exist as priced products. Full breakdown, tables, and sources: https://zurl.co/21hjm #Microsoft #Microsoft365 #SharePoint #SAMexpert

Microsoft 365 prices go up on 1 July. But the per-SKU numbers hide the real damage. Put the EA changes together: discounts gone, the July rise, E7 at $99 per user per month, the MCA-E move. That is 20% up on the last cycle. A bit of Copilot on top and you are past 23%. Microsoft will not call it a 23% increase. Your CFO will. There is more. Standalone SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business plans are going: no new sales after May 2026, no renewals after January 2027, gone by December 2029. The May Product Terms now count AI agents and automation as multiplexing. Agent 365 lands at $15. RPA outputs can no longer be used to train AI. Daryl Ullman pulls apart the EA question and large Azure negotiations. The State of SPLA 2026 survey is still open. And on 4 June, we're running an online session on Azure reservations with Stefan Denk and Michael Stephenson of Turbo360. "Donate even less to Azure in 2026." It is all in this month's digest. #Microsoft #MicrosoftLicensing #SPLA #SAMexpert

European regulatory pressure is quietly reshaping Microsoft's EA terms, and most organisations don't realise the impact: — Microsoft is tightening commercial terms preemptively to maintain control in an increasingly regulated environment. — They're reducing flexibility around license decoupling, vendor neutrality provisions, and migration scenarios. — Traditional EA structures that offered portability and vendor choice are being quietly phased out. — Microsoft needs to demonstrate compliance readiness before regulators force changes, so they're restricting customer options voluntarily. — The changes appear in contract language around data residency, interoperability, and competitive neutrality requirements. — European Digital Markets Act and similar regulations are forcing Microsoft to adjust their platform control strategy. What this means for your negotiation: — License portability options that existed in previous EA renewals may no longer be available. — Migration clauses and competitive protection language are becoming more restrictive. — Microsoft's willingness to accommodate multi-vendor strategies is decreasing as regulatory pressure increases. — Terms that previously favoured customer flexibility are being rewritten to favour Microsoft's compliance position. What our experts recommend: — Review your current EA terms against newer Microsoft contract language to identify lost flexibility. — Negotiate vendor neutrality provisions explicitly rather than assuming they'll be included. — Secure migration rights and data portability clauses before Microsoft restricts them further. — Document any multi-vendor strategy requirements in your EA rather than relying on informal arrangements. — Understand that Microsoft's negotiating position is hardening due to regulatory pressure, not just commercial strategy. — Plan for reduced flexibility in future renewals as compliance requirements shape Microsoft's standard terms. Microsoft is using regulatory compliance as justification for terms that primarily serve their platform control objectives. #Microsoft #Licensing #SAMexpert

Why do enterprises lose control of Copilot budgets? Because they're letting Microsoft dictate the conversation. They're treating this like it's just another licence, another incremental add-on. It's not. This is a strategic decision, and the moment you lose control of how it's negotiated, your entire budget structure is going to fall apart. Here's where it goes wrong. Microsoft walks in and immediately wants to talk Copilot numbers. They want to lock you into quantities right at the beginning. They want to anchor that negotiation early. Don't let that happen. You need to flip the sequence. Get your baseline EA terms sorted first. Lock in your discounts. Get traction on the fundamentals. Then, and only then, you bring Copilot into the conversation. Round two, round three, wherever it makes sense. And when you do open it up, challenge everything. They're going to tell you that you need E5 to get Copilot. But what's actually in that E5 upgrade that you're going to use? Run the numbers. Most of it's going to sit there unused. The smart play is gradual and controlled. You're a 50,000-seat organisation? Start with 5,000. Negotiate the right to scale over time. Get price protections. Make Microsoft prove the value before you commit the budget. Get them to put resources on the ground to help with deployment. And here's the thing nobody thinks about: look at how Copilot spend can work against your Azure commitments. There's flexibility there if you push for it. #Microsoft #Cloud #procurement #samexpert

The 2026 Microsoft EA renewal is not a renewal. It's a programme selection exercise dressed as one. Four overlapping shifts have reset enterprise licensing economics: Volume discounts on Online Services were eliminated on 1 November 2025. Every customer now pays Level A list price. Microsoft 365 list prices rise on 1 July 2026. E3 from $36 to $39. E5 from $57 to $60. Microsoft 365 E7 launched 1 May 2026 at $99 per user per month. The agreement stack has fragmented into EA, CSP, MCA-E, MS-EDS, and forced MCA migration. Discount removal and the list-price increase alone produce a 20% increase against the pre-November 2025 baseline for a typical Level C E3 customer. Add 3% Copilot adoption and the figure reaches 23%, before Unified Support uplift or MACC requirements. For most of the last twenty years, an EA renewal was a structured negotiation inside a known framework. That world ended on 1 November 2025. Our full analysis, including the worked example and the hybrid EA+CSP strategy is here: https://zurl.co/9dkeP #Microsoft #EnterpriseAgreement #SAMexpert

Microsoft’s May 2026 Product Terms launch Microsoft 365 E7 at $99 per user per month, introduce Agent 365 at $15, broaden multiplexing to cover AI agents and automation, ban RPA outputs from AI training, and disclose automated AI policy classifiers. Here's all the details you need: https://zurl.co/4L3zV #Microsoft #Licensing #AI

Organizations are treating Copilot like it's just the next evolution of Office. Office Standard, then Professional, then 365, then E3, then E5. Now Copilot. It feels automatic. But this is as big as an ERP implementation when you look at the implications. You're introducing something potentially bigger than SAP or Oracle into your organization. Where's the RFP? Where's the competitive analysis? Microsoft's got this no discount stance on Copilot. Take it or leave it. Well, not exactly. Large customers get discounts. But these are not the old-day EA discounts. So where's the value? Pilot funding. Favourable true-up terms. Rollout funding through partners. There are ways to offset costs that are not direct discounting. But here's the bigger play: run an RFI, then an RFP. Why? One, it forces excellent questions internally. Two, you're building a BATNA, a Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement with Microsoft. All of a sudden, you have leverage. Google Gemini, Watson X, Amazon Q, OpenAI. There are options. Stop treating this like an automatic Office upgrade and start treating it like the strategic decision it is. #Microsoft #Cloud #procurement #samexpert

What the State of SPLA 2026 Industry Survey looks at: SPLA strategy through 2028. Profitability and margin patterns. Monthly spend and revenue mix. Migration drivers and cloud readiness. Compliance posture and audit governance. Automated SPLA reporting. Flexible Virtualization Benefit (FVB) adoption. Azure Arc-enabled SQL billing. 28 questions. 6–8 minutes. Anonymous. Take part: https://zurl.co/E8KBq #Microsoft #Licensing #SPLA #Azure

How anonymity works on the State of SPLA 2026 Industry Survey. Survey answers are submitted with no identifier attached. The optional email field at the end sits in a separate store. The two are not linked at any point. If you leave your email, it is used to send you the report and your personal benchmarking code. Nothing else. Complete the survey, anonymously, in 6–8 minutes: https://zurl.co/2RWKU #Microsoft #Licensing #SPLA