When you immediately understand what Microsoft is introducing – hurray, 100 bonus points for you. When you don’t, do not worry. We’ll explain it is a bit. The interesting part is that Microsoft is now introducing Software Asset Management workflows as part of a cloud subscription management solution, and is that a good move?
Read time: 5 minutes
PowerApps Self Purchase
History lesson. Back in January 2020 Microsoft launched the self-service purchase feature for PowerApps. This allowed users within an organization to purchase Power platform products directly from Microsoft, without intervention of the IT or purchasing department. Microsoft intentions were not bad, but in day-2-day practice, organizations don’t want users to self-purchase software licenses or cloud subscriptions. So after strong objections from customers and partners Microsoft partly reversed and introduced the ability to turn off self-service purchase of individual users via Power Shell.
Self Service Purchase User Request
Starting July 2020 Microsoft introduces the intermediate solution. Those organizations who turned off the self-service purchase option for Microsoft PowerApps solutions now get a new feature. User’s who are blocked from purchasing can make a request that will be added to a queue in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. IT Admins can than assign a requested license to the user from an existing license or purchase new licenses / subscriptions to fulfill the request.
When you have read and understood the ‘request’ option instead of the ‘buy’ option, the new feature and title of this article ‘Self Service Purchase User Request’ must make sense.
Software Asset Management
The software or technology request and/or demand is a typical part of a software life cycle, which on itself is part of policies and procedures under the ISO 19770 Software Asset Management (SAM). Most organizations already have policies for software and/or cloud technology requests, written or in workflows. With this new Microsoft PowerApps user request option, Microsoft is most likely to interfere with existing SAM policies at their customers. Or, in our specific case, interferes with Software Asset Management services of Service Providers and Consulting Firms. We can imagine that a lot of customers are, like ourselves, not too happy with this new feature.
Back to Basics
We like to suggest that Microsoft sticks to what they do best, create innovative technology and sell this technology through licenses and (cloud) subscriptions and leave the management of software assets to customers and specialized service providers like Quexcel.
Might you as the customer think otherwise and want to incorporate the Microsoft user self-purchase or request options into your SAM policies, please do contact us for assistance. We are happy to help and make sure all of your policies and procedures in relation to software and cloud are safe and sound.