Further to my recent article on this subject, Microsoft has announced CSP partners will be able to offer ESUs for end of support versions of Windows Server and SQL Server commencing 1 October 2023.
To be able to purchase ESUs the licenses need to be Subscription or have active SA, Perpetual licenses do not qualify. If you purchase ESU after the start date of the ESU support then it is backdated. This means, for example, if you buy ESU in Year 2, you must also pay for Year 1.
Customers will then have the right to use licenses covered by ESUs on deployments on-premises or within outsourced environments running on Authorized Outsourcers (i.e. not Listed Providers: Azure, AS, GCP and Alibaba). Customers may also apply ESU licenses to “license-included” workloads acquired from Services Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) partners.
Please contact me if you are interested in looking at pricing and I will be in touch once the October pricelist is released, and we have pricing.
