Software King of the World, Microsoft is granting customers with specific licenses the power to run Office products within an AWS cloud.
This partially reverses a policy change made in 2019, which required customers with perpetual licenses to purchase new licenses if they wanted to run those applications on AWS, Google Cloud or Alibaba clouds.
Microsoft is the UK’s third largest cloud provider and so this has made it a target of a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In the complaint Google accused Microsoft of using its dominant position to trap customers into contracts within its Azure cloud server business.
Google claimed Microsoft uses software licencing restrictions to prevent customers from easily transitioning away from its cloud computing services.
Microsoft agreed to revise its licensing practices in the EU last year, with the goal of improving affordability for Azure customers who wanted to use additional cloud providers.
A senior executive at Amazon said that, while Microsoft had made superficial changes to its licenses to comply with European regulators, the company was still ensuring that its products remained more expensive when used on its competitors’ cloud platforms.
Microsoft has now introduced new licensing terms that exclusively benefit AWS cloud customers.
“Beginning August 1, 2023, users with specific licenses may run Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise/business, Microsoft Project, and Microsoft Visio on Amazon WorkSpaces,” Microsoft said in an update.
“The licenses that will be eligible under this revised policy include Microsoft 365 E3/E5/A3/A5 and Microsoft 365 Business Premium. If you currently have any of these licenses, starting from August 1, you will be able to utilize these Microsoft applications on Amazon WorkSpaces virtual desktop infrastructure.”
AWS also announced the availability of Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise on Amazon WorkSpaces, its cloud-based virtual desktop services.
“Your end users can now benefit from Microsoft 365 apps on WorkSpaces services along with their other devices,” AWS stated.
“To run Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise on Amazon WorkSpaces services, you can bring your own Microsoft 365 licenses (if they meet Microsoft’s licensing requirements) and activate the applications at no additional costs.”
The supported WorkSpaces instances for running Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise include those with Windows Server and Bring Your Own License (BYOL) Windows Desktop operating systems, operating on dedicated instances.
Eligible applications for use with Microsoft 365 Apps on WorkSpaces services encompass Microsoft Office tools such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneDrive and others.
Customers using Microsoft 365 Apps on WorkSpaces can also bring their licenses to install and utilise additional Microsoft applications like Project, Visio and Power Automate.
