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Author Archives: MS Licensing

Disaster Recovery Rights and License Mobility

30 Apr

 April 2015 PUR

Fail-over server rights do not apply in the case of software moved to shared third party servers under License Mobility through Software Assurance.

Example

Let’s say an end customer purchased a license with software assurance that qualifies for license mobility.  Since SA allows failover rights, most service providers (if not all) are under the impression they would get the same benefit in their datacenter as they would on premise.  In this example, the end customer transfers a SQL license over to the hoster, the hoster spins up a secondary SQL fail-over server.  Given the statement above from the PUR, If they are enabling SQL fail-over they would need a second license under SPLA.

 Why is this important?

For starters, compliance.  If that secondary server is not properly licensed or your under the assumption that if it exists on premise it must also exist in the cloud you are mistaken.

What about Cold DR?

Doesn’t exist anymore.

What about SQL Failover for SPLA specifically?

SQL SPLA licenses have fail-over rights.  Read the SPUR

What about other products for disaster recovery?

The SPUR has specific language around DR, how long the server can be active (non-production), when Windows would need to be reported, etc.

Any workarounds?

SAL for SA – I think this would fit well for DR.  Customer can still run the software on premise and spin up a second server in the cloud.

Normal SALs- 1 user SAL license can access multiple servers.  Could be another option if the customer is against license mobility.

In the words of a famous hoster “it’s not how you license…it’s how long can you get away with not licensing that really matters”  He was audited immediately following that statement.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on April 30, 2015 in Disaster Recovery

 

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What to do in a SPLA Audit….

14 Mar

Ahhh…the SPLA audit.  There are very few things in this world that can disrupt a business like an audit notification. In this post, I will write about the reasons behind an audit and what you can do about it.

Why –

Did you recently purchase another company?  Are you hosting software that you lease from a third-party such as e-discovery software or EMR software?  Did your SPLA report change (higher/lower)?  Have you not reported usage at all?  Do you advertise hosting offerings but report minimal usage?  Do you not have a SPLA agreement but provide software as a service?

All of the above are valid, but the more important reason?  They can.  Vendors can audit whoever they choose.  It’s their software. I wouldn’t focus on the “why” as much as I would focus on “how”  Meaning how do you reduce your exposure and go on with your business?

The first step with any audit notification is to not do anything.  Don’t blame someone, justify it somehow. etc, etc.  I would just breathe.  Again, vendors can audit whoever they want.  It might sound odd to not do anything (at first) but too many providers take to email and start fuming.  Don’t do that.

How –

There’s a ton of tricks and tips in an audit.  Here’s a list of some of the tips.

1. Take inventory.  I think every service provider knows where they are vulnerable.  99% of the time it starts with two products with 3 letters; S-Q-L and R-D-S.

2. Look at your customers.  Do any of your customers have software assurance?

3. Respond to the auditors, but keep one thing in mind – less is more my friend. Not responding will only frustrate everyone involved.

4. Don’t hire a lawyer – be the lawyer.  Have you ever been involved in a litigation dispute?  Your lawyer will contact the defendant; and the defendant contacts their lawyer.  What do you think happens if your lawyer contacts a vendor?  Vendor contacts their legal department. I hate to say it, but my money is on the guy with the billion(s) of dollars.  I’d rather talk to the vendor representative who needs my business.

5. Take inventory of the licenses you purchased outside of SPLA that you use(d) to support your hosted solution.

Now for the tricks –

Now it wouldn’t be fair if I show this to my competitors right?  Email me at info@splalicensing.com to find out more.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on March 14, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

What Would I Do?

21 Feb

I get asked for advice on licensing and the different ways to go to market if I had my own hosted offering.  Knowing what I know now, I put together a small list of things that I would strongly consider if I signed a SPLA.

  • Understand that I signed a contractual agreement with one of the largest companies in the world.  It’s amazing how many service provider’s do not read the SPLA agreement.  I’ve seen SPLA contracts signed five minutes after sending to the customer.  I always chuckle because I know they didn’t bother to read it.  Don’t let the fact that there’s no upfront licensing cost fool you into thinking there’s no reason to read the contract.  Even if you did read the SPLA agreement thoroughly when you signed it, when was the last time you reviewed it?  There are things in there that are very important.  For example, the start date of your agreement dictates how you can license certain products.  Did you know that when you sign a SPLA, you are bound by the SPUR available at the time of signing?  Did you know your contract is in no way with your reseller, but with Microsoft?
  • Speaking of reseller, I would look long and hard at the company you report and purchase licenses through. Too many times I hear providers say they report because they purchased from them before.  Whatever you purchased before is no sign into how well they know SPLA.  I would want to work with a reseller that knows the licenses as well as the industry.  This would ultimately save me headaches and save me money.
  • Report usage on time. Again, going back to the SPLA agreement, it states “usage is due by the 10th” If I was a hosting company that reported late, guess who the vendor is going to look at first in terms of compliance?
  • I would try to avoid standard SAL licenses if possible.  How much time do you spend tracking users?  I would promote license mobility in all my accounts.  I would strongly promote RDS license mobility.  If my customers won’t purchase licenses with Software Assurance, I would find another customer.  I want to put the compliance risk on my customer, not me.
  • If I received an audit notification I would ask for advice from the guy looking back in the mirror.  Three reasons why – I am free, I’ve seen audits and the mistakes SPLA customer make, and I know the program extremely well.  Arrogant?  Maybe. Smart move on your part? Absolutely. info@splalicensing.com
  • Although I would try to avoid standard SAL licenses, I would promote SAL for SA with a vengeance.  Don’t know SAL for SA?  Reread point number two.
  • I would work with Microsoft not against.  Why work against a company with the biggest marketing engine on the planet?  How can Microsoft help my business?
  • I would consider Hyper V.  I know, drinking the Kool Aid a bit here right?  Hook up the hose, I’m going all in!  (bad joke) There are products under SPLA that can save you a significant amount of licensing costs if you move to Hyper V.  I bet if the project was large enough, Microsoft would consider promoting.
  • I would work with a guy named SPLA Man.  If he’s spending his free time writing about this stuff (there’s obviously some mental issues going on) he apparently knows it pretty well. If you emailed me in the past, how long did it take for me to respond?  How long did it take your reseller to respond to the same question?

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man –

 
4 Comments

Posted by on February 21, 2015 in In My Opinion

 

Another round of SPLA questions…Answered.

15 Feb

Here’s a list of SPLA questions that I’ve been asked.  Hope you find it helpful.

1. Can I license SQL Web edition to host SharePoint?

No.  Why?  Because SQL Web Edition can only be used to host PUBLICLY accessible websites.  It also CANNOT be used to support line of business applications.

2. Is Exchange licensed by user or by mailbox?

By user.  SAL = User.

3. System Center….What does the client management suite include?

Service Manager, Operations Manager, DPM, and Orchestrator.

4. If I have SQL Enterprise installed and was reporting it prior (by user) – can we report SQL BI without uninstalling anything?  Reason we ask is SQL Enterprise user licenses are discontinued.

Unfortunately no.  Two different products.  Checkout http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645993.aspx

5. Active/Passive…Do I need to licenses the passive server?

No. The passive secondary server used for failover support does not need to be separately licensed for SQL Server as long as it is truly passive. If it is serving data, such as reports to clients running active SQL Server workloads or performing any “work” such as additional backups from secondary servers, then it must be licensed for SQL Server.

6. My company is in Europe or Australia, how are my competitors offering lower prices?

Can’t answer that one publicly or else all your competitors would know too. I can promise you there are ways to reduce your costs, I just have to understand what you are reporting and why.  Email me your usage report and let’s chat. (blaforge@splalicensing.com).

7. My company is in the United States, how are my competitors offering lower prices?

See answer to question 6.

8. I want to offer VDI.

Good Luck.

9. I got an audit letter…what do I do?  

Nothing.  Email me and let’s walk through it.

10. Office – do I need to report it?

Will your application work the same without it?

11. I’m running SQL 2008, which is great because I can license it by processor..right?  I don’t have to license by core since I am not running 2012.

Wrong.  License by core if you signed a SPLA agreement between now and January, 2013.

12. I want to install customer owned Windows Server licenses in my datacenter.  

Do it.  Just make sure it’s dedicated.

13.  What’s something I should do now to ensure I am getting the most value from my SPLA expenditure?

People get worked up over the SPUR and forget about the actual SPLA agreement they signed.  Yes, the SPUR tells you how to license the products (not so clearly) but the agreement provides you insight into how the program works operationally.  It also tells you things that you CAN do with your SPLA.  Just don’t hand the agreement over to a lawyer, have them approve it, and never look at it again.  Big mistake in my opinion.

Thanks for reading…

SPLA Man

 
2 Comments

Posted by on February 15, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

IaaS Gotchas…

31 Jan

In this post I will highlight new (and not so new) compliance gotchas as it pertains to providing infrastructure as a service.

Let’s start with a common example and go from there.  You provide the infrastructure such as Windows/SQL, your customer provides the applications.  Sound familiar?  You license Windows Datacenter, SQL Enterprise in a shared (aka public cloud) environment under SPLA. You have no idea or really care what applications your customer’s are installing right?  You just provide the support of the infrastructure.  That’s not your concern.  It’s their application, why should you care?  Ahhh…but maybe you should.

Have you ever wondered how they’re accessing the applications?  Are all applications web-based?  I will answer that question for you…no.  So how are they accessing the applications?  Do they use Citrix?  Do they remote into the application somehow?  There’s that word…remote.

If you enable the Remote Desktop Services role within Windows Server – you guessed it…you need to report RDS licenses.  The number of IaaS providers who just report Windows and SQL is astronomical. The number of IaaS providers now reporting RDS is also rapidly growing.  Did they wake up one day and decide they should start reporting RDS?  Unfortunately no.  They were audited.  Shoot me over an email and I will forward the guide that explains RDS and when it applies. Remember when you license RDS, you need to license each user that HAS access to RDS – not who does access.

Let me provide an example of how easily you could be underreporting RDS.   Let’s say your customer has an application from another vendor (outside Microsoft) that’s hosted in your datacenter.  That same vendor provides support to the application.  You are not hosting the application for the vendor but for your customer, you just provide the vendor access to support the application via remote connection.  SPLA allows 20 users to provide support and administration per datacenter.  If you exceed that limit, you are going to have to report those additional users.  Yes, even if you are not charging them.

Other IaaS Gotchas –

While we’re on the topic of customer owned applications, do you have it written in your agreement with the customer that you are not responsible for the applications they install?  What would happen if they install applications that you are not aware of and they don’t have the appropriate licenses…who’s responsible you or the end customer?  Kind of a trick question, it’s both.  You will get audited, it’s installed in your datacenter, you are ultimately responsible.  You need to ensure you have it written in your agreement that you’re not responsible so you can have a nice chat with your customer.  All the big boys do it…you should too.

What about SQL?  Are you virtualizing?  Why aren’t you reporting SQL Enterprise?  Are you utilizing all the use rights that come with SQL Enterprise – unlimited virtualization, DR, mobility within server farms, etc?  What about smaller environments?  Have you considered licensing by user instead of by core for SQL Standard edition?

SQL Web is tempting isn’t it?  Less expensive option but no one really understands what it is.   Here’s a quick synopsis – if you do not host public facing websites, SQL Web is not an option.

How are you managing your datacenter? Do you have System Center installed?  You should report the Core Infrastructure Suite.  Running Hyper V with few VM’s, license CPS. Both products include Windows.  You need Windows to run System Center, so you kill two birds with one stone so to speak.

Ask your customers if they have Software Assurance.  It’s no longer about latest version rights and annual payments.  It’s about moving to the cloud.  Let’s make sure it’s your cloud and not someone else’s.

Conclusion –

I’ve been around this game of SPLA for a long time.  The best advice I can give is to listen to your customers and don’t be afraid to change.  Cloud is evolving, you should evolve too.  Don’t report out of convenience, look into ways you can optimize what you are reporting.  It’s competitive out there, let’s make sure you are getting the most value out of your agreement.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 

 

 
11 Comments

Posted by on January 31, 2015 in IaaS

 

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Happy New Year! SPLA Predictions 2015

02 Jan

Happy New Year everyone!  Here’s to a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2015.  Thank you for reading my blog, it’s been a fun ride.

As we know, the world of SPLA is ever-changing.  Here’s a list of 5 SPLA predictions for 2015.  I will book this post, and see where we are at in 2016.

1.  IaaS providers will continue to flourish as customer’s and hoster’s have a better understanding of license mobility and the ways it can lower licensing costs.  Companies will leverage the Azure and Amazon momentum to offer their own unique offerings.

2. Compliance will be front and center.  Surprise!  Companies that are hosting but don’t know they are hosting will be the most impacted.

3. “Cloud Sprawl” will be the new term used by IT consultants and managed service providers.  As the cloud industry expands, there will be a push to consolidate vendors.

4. There will be new terms for hosting VDI. I don’t know what that means from a licensing perspective, but I can see Microsoft making a change in the ways VDI can be deployed for third-party hosters.  Perhaps good news in the works?  Again, just guessing here.

5. Like VDI, I can see a change in the way Office can be deployed.  In my opinion, too many ISV’s use Office as part of their application, it would make sense to make this more economical to host it.

What do you think will happen in 2015?  Will hosting expand, retract or stay the same?  Will VDI and Office use rights change?  Time will tell.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on January 2, 2015 in In My Opinion

 

How I saved a company over $100K a year in reporting

30 Dec

Sounds pretty good doesn’t it?  This is a story about knowing what you are reporting and the reasoning behind it. Windows 2012 was launched a couple of years ago (give or take).  At that time there were several service providers reporting Windows Enterprise.  Their customers had applications that needed the functionality of Windows Enterprise, and since it wasn’t virtualized, Windows Datacenter was not an option. The service provider continued to report/license Windows Enterprise after the launch of 2012.  There’s nothing wrong with this, in fact, the terms of the SPLA agreement state you can continue licensing 2008 use rights up until your agreement expires.  What most providers don’t know is you can do the opposite.  You can run 2008 versions but report 2012.  Why would they do that?

In this case, they had Windows Enterprise installed; but since Windows Enterprise was discontinued with the release of 2012, they could downgrade to Windows Standard edition. Sounds funny doesn’t it?  DOWNGRADE to Windows Standard from Enterprise?  Yes, I said that correct.  Enterprise is discontinued. Again, nothing was virtual, and that is very important. If it was virtual, they would continue to report Enterprise up until the agreement expired and report Windows Datacenter moving forward.   Not only did he save on their monthly usage report, I’m guessing he had added margin since he was already contracted with his customer.

Quick note – not all products discontinued have the same outcome.  In most cases (such as SQL 2012 switch to cores) their costs actually went up

Ahh…but where is this written in the SPUR?  I’ll save you time, it’s not.  That’s why you need to read “Why Timing is Everything” You are bound by the SPUR (i.e.products/versions/use rights) available at the time of signing your SPLA agreement.  Those reporting SQL by processor better pay attention.

I receive 100’s of SPLA questions from the SPLA community about licensing and the cost associated with it. From the largest of the large providers down to a guy hosting Windows Web Server out of his parents basement (which is discontinued by the way), there’s always way you can reconsider your strategy. Moral of the story?  Pay attention to how you report and don’t report out of convenience…It can cost you.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on December 30, 2014 in In My Opinion, Windows Virtualization

 

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Price increases in 2015!!

16 Dec

Happy New Year!  Here’s a price increase. How can Microsoft do this?  In the SPLA agreement it states they (Microsoft) can issue a price increase once a year in January.  Be prepared! Are there decreases?  No, but that doesn’t mean you cannot reduce your costs.

If you report over 10,000 a month (US, EU, or Australia) in SPLA reporting email me and let’s review. (blaforge@splalicensing.com) Why 10,000?  Historically, that’s where I was able to make the most cost savings.  There are tricks to licensing that often get overlooked.  In the “about” section of this blog, I mention I want to ensure you are licensing correctly (that’s #1) but just as important, the most cost effective way.  Happy to help.

Thanks for reading!

SPLA Man

 

 
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Posted by on December 16, 2014 in Uncategorized

 

Office 365 and SPLA – It’s all about Office

06 Dec

The #1 post (by volume) on this blog site is “Office 365 Under SPLA.”  (It’s probably what brought you to this article in the first place). For those that read this blog regularly, can you guess #2?  Ok…you give up.  If you would’ve guessed  “Office Needs Mobility Rights” you would have been correct.  Can I conclude in my scientific analysis that Office is at the top of everyone’s mind in the hosting industry?

Who remember’s BPOS?  Remember that beauty?  I used to manage BPOS several years ago. BPOS consisted of Exchange Online, OCS (that’s right…OCS not Lync) and SharePoint online.  It was bundled as a package and sold to smaller companies (originally).  It was a big deal.  For “x” amount of dollars you would get a 5GB mailbox!  Google caught on, raised the bar to 10GB mailbox, than 20 and the cloud race still continues today.  Mailbox size and price was what everyone talked about.  I remember it well. Than Microsoft threw the cloud world a curve ball.  “What would happen if we offer Office as a subscription model and call it Office 365”  Things started to change pretty quickly.  Office as a subscription?  “But wait…let’s allow Office to be installed on not one device, but 5!  Now the cloud world is really spinning.”  What’s next?

Let’s don’t forget about our friend Azure.  Who could forget about him?  Azure is growing rapidly (talk about a generality but remember I am SPLA Man, not Gartner) and adding new features such as Linux VM’s, ability to purchase using your Enterprise Agreement, and the biggest news of all….ability to install a copy of Office from Office 365.  Wait! What?!!!

Let’s take a step back and look at what Office means for the SPLA community.  You want to host Office? Here’s what you need.  Windows + RDS+Office.  There you have it.

Here’s what you can’t do – Under no circumstance can you have your end customer purchase Office under Office 365 and install it in your shared cloud.  Don’t argue with me here…you can’t do it.  You are probably thinking…well, that’s ok, i will dedicate a VM.  Ahhhh….there we go again.  Dedicated a customer owned license on a VM.  What did I just describe?

Dedicate a VM +shared hardware = License Mobility.  What does not have license mobility rights?  Office.

Now back to Azure.  You might be thinking that Azure is a shared cloud. It is. How can they do it but I can’t?  Well, they developed Office and they developed Azure.  They can make up the rules to their own game.  Check out the online services terms page 22

What happens if you purchase your own Azure agreement to host your SaaS offering for your clients?  It doesn’t matter.  A hoster leveraging Azure for their offering would not be able to accept end-user Office 365 Office licenses.

So is it all doom and gloom?  Not by a long shot.  When there’s confusion, when your competitors spend more time worrying about what they can’t do instead of focusing on growing their business, consider that an opportunity. I’ve written 70+ articles on SPLA.  It’s not going away and neither are you.  I just think you (the service provider) need to get creative. Price is always an issue.  Office is an issue today, but it will be something else tomorrow.  Again, don’t focus on what you can’t do, it’s time to start thinking about what you can do.

I am going to write another article in which I provide a real world example on how I was able to save a service provider money  It’s not revolutionary, but it proves that if your not working with someone who looks at your usage report regularly and makes suggestions to reduce costs, you are missing out.  Sounds kind of like a salesman, but I think you will find the article helpful.  I can’t change the rules of SPLA, but I can make recommendations in the way you think about your business.  It’s time to reconsider our licensing strategy.  Stay tuned.  In the meantime, here’s a cool glimpse into the future.

Future of Office 

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
6 Comments

Posted by on December 6, 2014 in Azure, Office 365

 

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A Fireside Chat with a Microsoft SQL Technical Specialist…What’s new and how you can profit from Microsoft SQL Enterprise

23 Nov

I had the opportunity to sit down with Sarah Barela, SQL Server Technical Specialist at Microsoft. She’s very passionate in her role and without question a great resource. In this interview, it’s all about SQL. More importantly, it’s about SQL for the service provider community. Although this blog is about licensing, I focused more on the features of SQL.

Special thanks to Sarah and the US Microsoft Hosting team for accommodating!

SPLA Man – Hi Sarah, thank you for spending some time with me this morning to chat about one of your favorite topics…SQL.

Sarah – My pleasure!

SPLA Man – So tell me a little bit about yourself, where did this passion for SQL start?

Sarah – (Chuckles) I started working with SQL over 17 years ago; back in the day with SQL 6.5. (I might be dating myself here) I worked for (who at the time) a service provider called Maximum ASP. Our primary focus was working with the Microsoft developer community and my role was database management. My responsibilities grew to the point I was managing over 1k databases by myself! Needless to say I became a specialists in managing larger deployments which ultimately led me to Microsoft in 2013. Now my role is to help service providers deploy new SQL Server offers.

SPLA Man – What are some cool new features of 2014 that service providers can take advantage of?

Sarah – Biggest new feature is called in memory OLTP – stands for online transactional processing. From the most basic level it allows to you to put your tables in your database into RAM memory to make it very fast.   There’s also a lot of new hybrid features to move from on premise to public cloud to make the transition easier.

SPLA Man – So I talk to service provider’s all day long. One thing that always surprises me is although they have the right to use the latest version under SPLA, for one reason or another they still are running SQL 2008 and in some cases 2005. Why would now be a good time to upgrade?

Sarah – For one thing, it’s support. Both 2005 and 2008 is in extended support. I’ve found that cloud technologies and customers want more features more rapidly. Waiting to deploy newer versions is becoming less of an option, as your customers will be out of data. There are also more features added that applications want to take advantage of including the in memory feature within SQL 2014. There’s also minimal effort in deployment, but the impact in performance could significant.

SPLA Man – There’s a lot of talk about SQL Enterprise, what type of service provider’s do you see deploying Enterprise? Is there anything special they should consider?

Sarah – I think it really boils down to database needs over a specific market profile. Think of social media companies (as an example). They may have fewer employees, but consume parabyte’s of data. By any other standard, they would be considered a small business. I think that’s the biggest thing. All service providers use Enterprise on some level but I would say those service provider’s that consume a large amount of data and have high availability requirements would be a starting point.

SPLA Man – So speaking of data, one of the features in SQL Enterprise is something called data compression. Which is available in Enterprise, but not available in Standard. What is data compression?

Sarah – So what data compression does is it’s an algorithm used to compress data as it is stored on discs. So let’s take an example of a database that stores a consumer’s address. A person’s street address is fairly unique. But city, state, and zip code are more common; (there are only 50 states as an example), so what data compression does is it finds data and shrinks it down so it does not store duplicate information. So ultimately, this reduces the amount of disc space needed; especially in very large environments. If you are spending a large amount of money on storage and you can reduce that by (whatever amount that equates) than that saves actual money on hardware. That’s why it is so important.

SPLA Man –So data compression aside…what are other areas a service provider become more profitable by switching to SQL Enterprise over Standard? As an example, are tasks better performed with 1 instance of SQL Enterprise v. several instances of SQL Standard?

Sarah – One of the things that SQL Enterprise allows you to do is it has features in there that support multi-tenancy. The more customers you can have running on a single server, you can spread that cost over more customers; which can lower your cost as well as the overall cost per individual customer. Those features like the resource governor, allows a service provider to divide up resources within the SQL server. It prevents things such as (what we call) “the noisy neighbor” in other words, one customer can’t impact the processing of another. There are also features within Enterprise that allows for isolation; so one customer has no access to another customer’s database. So it is secure. From a licensing perspective, Enterprise does allow unlimited virtualization if you license by the physical core. This allows for more consolidation (including hardware). Although the price per core is higher than Standard, when you look at spinning up multiple VM’s it becomes much more cost-effective. So it all goes back to the idea of multi-tenancy. The more customers you can run on a single physical hardware or by using virtualization, you can spread the cost of Enterprise across different customers.

SPLA Man – What about SQL BI? I rarely see this being reported. Are service providers missing something? What’s a good differentiation between SQL Standard and SQL BI?

Sarah – Service providers are hosting applications that are used by multiple people. What I have found in BI Edition (which is SQL Standard plus additional data warehousing and Business Intelligence technologies in the SQL server stack) is that often times the number of users that are using those features conflicts with the way it’s licensed. SQL BI is licensed by SAL only (not by core), and it is often more cost-effective to use Enterprise in a hosted environment. (Large amount of end users) I also think there’s familiarity with Enterprise and/or Standard, so they stick with what they know. If you have smaller environments where users are connecting to that database, than BI is a good option.

SPLA Man – A ton of service providers license SQL Web because it’s cheap. Although SQL Web is less expensive, from a licensing perspective there are some limitations. Can you elaborate?

Sarah – When I started at Microsoft, I did not know that SQL Web Edition was just for public websites. When you read it you think it could be used for any website. One trick is it has to be public website and certainly cannot be used to support a line of business applications. One thing to consider, if a website has a log in; then it’s not public.

Side Note – from the SPUR page 26. Notice it states: “support public AND Internet accessible” Not public OR Internet accessible” There’s a big difference between “and” and “or”

The software may be used only to support public and Internet accessible

Web pages

Web sites

Web applications

Web services

It may not be used to support line of business applications (e.g., Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise Resource Management and other similar applications).

SPLA Man – One service provider told me that Oracle was better, simply because it wasn’t dependent on the platform that it runs on. How would you respond to that?

Sarah – Although true, Windows is universal and is highly available as well.

SPLA Man – Are there any promotions service providers can take advantage of?

Sarah – SPLA partners may want to check with their SPLA reseller from time to time to see if there are any upcoming promotions, new products, or licensing changes.

Side Note –  although there’s not a special promotion tied to SQL at this time, service providers can always offer free trials and product demonstrations to your end customers. This is part of the SPLA agreement.

SPLA Man – Where’s a good resource for more information?

Sarah – One of the resources I used the most when I was working at a service provider was the feature matrix, which shows what features are in each edition of SQL server. This is found at www.microsoft.com/SQL you can also check out http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/sql-server/default.aspx

SPLA Man – Well I think that covers it. Thank you again for taking the time.

Sarah – No problem! Great catching up with you.

So what are your thoughts?  How do you leverage SQL in a hosted environment?  Need help with licensing? Reach out to us and let’s review your options.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on November 23, 2014 in Interviews, SQL 2014

 

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