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Category: Microsoft Licensing Compliance

Microsoft addresses licensing complexity

This week, while at SoftSummit in San Jose, Microsoft is stressing that they aren’t trying to make their licensing complex, but they do admit that there are complexities that must be addressed – for example – with cloud and virtualization.

Microsoft upgrade trick could save $$$

Just when you think you have everything in order, another new Microsoft release comes out and you are faced with the decision of whether or not to upgrade or just stick with what you have installed. The option of upgrading to the new Office 2010 has many organizations pondering whether or not they really need it, and can sacrifice the costs to do so, especially considering the current economic climate.

What’s the biggest Microsoft licensing issue?

Boy! We get this question all the time. Cost. The cost- Enterprise Agreement, in particular – has come under increased scrutiny during the recent economic stress. Both IT and Financial executives are questioning the value of their licensing and support dollars. This scrutiny is not lessening as businesses respond to the economic recovery and start to move forward with new applications and systems requiring new infrastructure and software. If anything, it may be increasing. Clients are – and should be […]

Licensing usage: Use as intended (always)

No matter what day or week it is, we’ll always get a question about “how else can we use our license” with a very specific example. The short answer is – you must always use licenses as they are intended for use, otherwise you will be out of compliance, and penalties can be steep! We understand that there are a lot of gray areas in your licensing agreement, but this usage is usually not one of them. One example of […]

Changes are happening with Microsoft virtual environments!

Some good news regarding Microsoft licensing in virtual environments – near the end of March, Microsoft announced that customers with active Software Agreements on Windows desktop software can freely access virtualized Windows desktop instances without additional charge. This is an important and welcome departure from the prior model of Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD) which resulted in additional costs to customers contemplating the move to a virtual desktop environment. The critical point here, of course, is an active Software Assurance […]

Microsoft phasing out Itanium support

For all of you that are using Itanium versions of Microsoft products, be aware that the company plans on phasing out support of the architecture. Don’t panic though – this process will take about 8 years to fully take effect. Microsoft claims that Itanium is being replaced but more capable technologies from makers Intel and AMD, and will be the way of the past in a few short years, although Intel has just introduced a new version of Itanium as […]

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