Here’s a little story about a SPLA Provider (the hoster) who emailed me several times complaining about his reseller.  He just received an audit notification, he’s concerned about inadequate licensing guidance, he over reported on licenses because no one he talked to could help him, and last but certainly not least, he’s scared because of the possibility of underreporting SQL.  This is based off the information his reseller provided to him. He found my blog helpful but when I asked, “why are you still with your reseller?”  He told me he likes to be invoiced from one source, he’s been with them for a long time, and he doesn’t want to complicate things.

Now I am not a math wizard by any stretch of the imagination, but if added everything he pays in Microsoft licensing alone, it would be well over one million US dollars.  When I did a quick analysis of his usage reporting, I found he was reporting Windows Standard by VM instead of by physical processor.  So he was under reporting  his Windows licenses.  He was also reporting his SQL environment by core (yay!) but he was reporting all physical cores and virtual cores in the environment with SQL Enterprise.  He was virtualized but wasn’t taking advantage of the use right called “license mobility within server farms.” Last, SQL Enterprise has unlimited virtualization rights as long as all physical cores are licensed.

In conclusion, his reseller told him he was under reporting SQL, when he was actually over reporting SQL.  So what did he do?  He paid his bill and continued with his reseller. It was too much of a hassle to move.  (it’s just a one page document).  He couldn’t utter the words “it’s not you…it’s me” and switch resellers.

Moral of the story?  Don’t report out of convenience, report what you owe but not a dime over.  It pays to work with someone who knows the program.

Thanks for reading

SPLA Man