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.
For those organizations that have Software Assurance (SA), you are in luck. You may not need to pay to upgrade as its part of your SA contract. Those that opted out of SA, or smaller businesses that are buying their software from the local Staples of Office Depot are facing a significant spend to upgrade. There is, however, a loop hole. Yes, a Microsoft loop hole! If you currently have Office 2003, you should consider upgrading to Office 2007, and then to Office 2010. Because Office 2007 offers upgrade pricing, which gives you a discount not available with Office 2010, you could save as much as $200 per installation.
If you want to upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2010, you have to buy, install, and validate a copy of Office 2007. Then you will get a free upgrade from Office 2007 to Office 2010. So, you can move from 2003 to 2010 for the discounted cost of moving from 2003 to 2007. The only downside is all the extra installation time and effort.
Two things to watch out for when considering this move on the licensing front – pay attention to each version and the licensing terms. You may need to buy a specific version of 03 and/or 07 in order to qualify for the right free upgrade. If you really want to upgrade, and save some money while doing so, make sure you have copies of Office 2007 handy, or get them while the getting is good!
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 - demanding greater understanding of their environments and the costs associated with achieving and maintaining a compliant license position.
Anticipation of increased deployments that were placed on-hold over the past 12 to 24 months. This especially involves software vendors, whose sales teams could be more aggressive, whose pricing models may become more complex, and whose audit teams may become more vigilant in detecting and pursuing potential non-compliance situations.
Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service opportunities will see a rise in interest. In order to gain a strategic advantage on the competition, an organization may opt for such a service which can make a particular business application operational more quickly. The Azure cloud services operating system illustrates Microsoft’s entry into this market. We predict more services like this to take off as businesses change and become more mobile. Customers are looking for simply, quick to deployment and cost-effective solutions versus expensive and drawn-out implementations.
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 this is the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN), one of several subscription-based offerings from Microsoft. It gives a licensed user access to many tools, to support forums, to trial version software, and many more features. However, the applications supported by the software available under the MSDN subscription can only be used in a development environment. Once these applications are deployed in production, the proper licensing is required. For example, SQL Server can be downloaded by an MSDN licensee. Once the application is to be deployed in production, SQL Server licensing for the production environment must be purchased. However, one of the benefits of MSDN is that licenses do not have to be purchased for proof-of-concept initiatives.
Be sure that you are properly licensed at all times, non-compliance is a big issue and most organizations don’t even realize they are doing it!
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 agreement. Recent cost cutting measures, coupled with reluctance in moving from the stability of a Windows XP platform to the Vista platform, have resulted in Software Assurance being dropped in some instances.
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 recently as February.
According to Dan Reger of Microsoft, Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the last version of Windows Server to support Itanium along with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010, which have yet to be released. Windows Server 2008 R2 will be supported until July 9, 2013, while extended support will continue until July 10, 2018. Red Hat is also mimicking Microsoft as phasing out support as well.
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 have only just come forward to say that the intent to create a “hybrid” licensing model between per-user and per-device licensing. The software company claims that it cannot accurately get a count of licenses per access point using any alternate licensing model, which currently exists; so Microsoft will have its work cut out for them when trying to come up with a new model.
We predict that Microsoft will introduce small changes, gradually, to accommodate the most immediate problems with virtualization, until the company can develop a model that works for everyone involved.
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), Add-on Subscription Licenses (Add-on SLs), or Management Licenses (MLs). You must purchase applications through the volume licensing program as well; those purchased through retail outlets are not covered under this same rule.
What exactly is a server farm? Definition: A server farm consists of up to two data centers with each physically located in the following areas:
In a time zone that is within four hours of the local time zone of the other (Coordinated Universal Time [UTC] and not DST), and/or
Within the European Union (EU) and/or European Free Trade Association (EFTA)
Each data center may be part of only one server farm. You may reassign a data center from one server farm to another, but not on a short-term basis (that is, not within 90 days of the last assignment). You must meet the qualifications of a server farm in order to reassign freely, as long as you are not running the same application at the same time on two separate servers. Otherwise, you must maintain the standard 90-day waiting period to reassign applications.
One important rule in server licensing (especially in the Microsoft environment) is understanding your peak capacity. Very simply, you must be licensed for the maximum usage of your server - the maximum number of running instances. Even if you, for example, only ever need one instance, but there is a possibility at some point there will be two instances run on that server at the same time - it needs to be licensed for two.
The number of instances that can be run on a server at one time will vary based on the version you have. For example, Windows Server 2008 Standard only allows one instance at a time, where the Enterprise version allows four and the Datacenter version is unlimited.
It’s very important to know what the maximum instances running will be in order to properly license and remain in compliance.
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. 
