Tag: Microsoft licensing

Office 365 for Consumers: What You Need to Know

Although Microsoft Office 365 for businesses isn’t out until later this month – the consumer version – Home Premium – is available now. How does that affect your business? Well, any employee who has Home Premium (which includes Outlook and Access), and uses a computer with this version installed, that connects to corporate email or databases, is misusing the license. The Home Premium license does not cover these instances. Specifically, it says” Only one person at a time may use […]

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 […]

The simplest of them all – developer tools

Online services are one of the easier licensing models from Microsoft. Yet, even simpler are developer tools – one license is required for each user that accesses the software. Regardless of how many copies are installed on however many of devices, each user must be licensed individually and the software must be used only to “design, develop, test or demonstrate” programs. In order to remain in compliance, be absolutely sure each user is licensed properly and you use the software […]

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