Tag: Microsoft

What’s the biggest Microsoft licensing issue?
Scott D. RosenbergMicrosoft Licensing Compliance, Microsoft Licensing TipLeave a Comment on 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)
Scott D. RosenbergMicrosoft Licensing Compliance, Microsoft Licensing Tip, Microsoft: News You Can UseLeave a Comment on 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!
Scott D. RosenbergLicensing Change Alert, Microsoft Licensing Compliance, Microsoft Licensing Tip, Microsoft: News You Can UseLeave a Comment on 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
Scott D. RosenbergLicensing Change Alert, Microsoft Licensing Compliance, Microsoft Licensing Tip, Microsoft: News You Can UseLeave a Comment on 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 […]

Microsoft changes are a-coming!
Scott D. RosenbergLicensing Change Alert, Microsoft Licensing Compliance, Microsoft: News You Can UseLeave a Comment on Microsoft changes are a-coming!

We have addressed how the per-device licensing model that Microsoft currently utilizes is slowing the adoption of virtualization, making it too expensive. But… guess what? Later this year, Microsoft is finally going to make some changes! Some of the complaints from the industry have been about the required purchase of SA in order to access virtual desktop tools, and that Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD), which is required, is too expensive. While Microsoft is well aware of these issues that […]

Microsoft apologizes
Scott D. RosenbergMicrosoft: News You Can UseLeave a Comment on Microsoft apologizes

In December, some of you may have noticed, that Microsoft revamped its volume licensing site in order to have one system for both business users and software partners. The company has gotten many, many complaints about email verification. Microsoft issued an apology on its website, but if you read through the string of comments, you will see that many are still facing problems and the glitch in the system has not been fixed, as promised. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, […]

Microsoft: Giving away the server farms
Scott D. RosenbergMicrosoft Licensing Compliance, Microsoft Licensing TipLeave a Comment on Microsoft: Giving away the server farms

For those of you with a large number of servers, Microsoft has made some changes in its licensing in the past year to accommodate virtualization. You can license by server farm, instead of by server. Microsoft customers are able to reassign licenses freely across servers within that server farm, but only for certain server applications. It does not apply to software licenses for the Windows Server operating system, Client Access Licenses (CALs), User Subscription Licenses (USLs), Device Subscription Licenses (DSLs), […]

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