Microsoft AEP-MEPN Program retirement
The Microsoft Authorized Education Partner (AEP) program, where Microsoft partners get certified via training to transact academic licenses to education customers is being discontinued as of October 1, 2019. This coincides with the distribution of the updated Microsoft Partner Agreements (MPA) being sent to partners and distributors for signature on the same day.
As a result of the retirement, the AEP certification is no longer required.
All rhipe CSP resellers are still required to confirm their customer’s eligibility, as defined by the Microsoft Qualified Education Users documentation, for academic purchases. You may ONLY transact academically-priced licenses to academic institutions as defined in the documentation. Although the AEP-MEPN program is now retired, you are still required to request us to release CSP academic pricelist to you to view the price list in the PRISM portal.
Microsoft security baseline is GA now
The Windows MDM security baselines are now generally available. The security baseline consists of numerous industry-standard configurations, which is developed by security professionals globally. These settings are updated at regular intervals to fit the ever-changing business needs.
The security baselines policies live in the cloud and can be deployed within minutes. For an organization using on-prem group policy, it’s easier to migrate policy management to the cloud with the help of baseline policies already available in the Intune portal. The security baseline also has inbuilt versioning feature which can swap the baseline version of one policy with the other.
A security baseline is available for partners who already have Microsoft 365 E3/E5 and EMS E3/E5.
Please refer to the documentation below to find out more on Security baseline: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/intune/
Microsoft 365 now natively protects Adobe Acrobat Reader using App Protection
This major update will get you excited, as Intune app protection policy can now protect pdf in Adobe Acrobat Reader. The experience is as seamless as any Office 365 app such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. This will also help the users to be more productive as the organization data can easily be protected at the same time keeping the personal data private.
Please check out the link to find out more info: https://www.microsoft.com/en-my/microsoft-365/blog/2019/09/05/adobe-acrobat-ios-android-microsoft-365-app-protection/
Windows Virtual Desktop in Azure pricing calculator
Windows virtual desktop is the new exciting virtual desktop and application solution in Azure which makes the VDI deployment much easier when compared to the traditional RDS infrastructure deployment. Please follow the link here to find out more: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/services/virtual-desktop/
Save money and price WVD using Azure pricing calculator today: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/pricing/calculator/
This rhipe monthly CSP update is brought to you by the rhipe marketing team and our CSP Partner Enablement Specialists.
To stay up to date with what’s happening in the Microsoft CSP program, we strongly encourage you to join the Microsoft CSP licensing update call: https://commercial_licensing.eventbuilder.com/YearToDate_ALL
If you have any questions, please contact the rhipe S&E CSP team through email, Twitter or LinkedIn below.
