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Author Archives: MS Licensing

Don’t be Dave – Hosting SharePoint 2013

02 Mar

I wrote an earlier blog post about the generalities of SharePoint (you can check it out here)  but thought I would review further by providing an example. Here’s a fictitious story about SharePoint, and why I think there is so much confusion.

Dave worked for an insurance software company XYZ. They were in a pickle to say the least.  His focus was developing software, not licensing it.  He used a SharePoint site to host a line of business application that he charged a fee for customers to consume.  I will save you the details of the application, but hopefully you will get my point.

This application went out to the insurance broker community as well as the broker’s customers.  That being said, not all the information accessed was the same.  Every broker (non employees of the insurance software company; not affiliated in any way) had access to their own unique information through their own credentials.  Every end customer (the broker’s customer) had access to their own individual information as well. Dave decided that the number of users would be in the thousands, surely a processor based license would do the trick.

He went ahead and used SPLA because he knew his company was hosting and providing a commercial service. (he also read page 9 of the PUR for volume licensing “prohibit commercial hosting”) For two years he licensed by processor that covered all the users.  Secondly, he never reported SQL. SQL is not being accessed directly, just used to collect the data. He also licensed Windows via SPLA.

One day Dave stumbled upon my blog.  After doing a little research, he found a blurb “need a SPLA license for direct or indirect access.”  He wondered if SQL would be considered “indirect.”  While contemplating whether he should have licensed SQL, he thought of his solution in its entirety. If he removed the SQL server from SharePoint, would it still work? Of course it wouldn’t, which is why he needed a SQL SPLA license too. Now his heart was really pumping. Dave almost had a stroke. Then one night he was having a difficult time sleeping, and decided to check out the SPUR. After all, the SPUR surely would put him to sleep pretty quickly!  Before his tired eyes closed for the night he happened to read “Hosting SharePoint 2013.”  Curious what this was all about, he poured a cup of coffee and sat down only to find what he was doing was completely wrong.  Here’s the blurb he read aloud, waking not only his dog, but his wife as well.  Ouch.

All content, information, and applications accessible by internal users must also be accessible to external users. Access to servers that provide content, information, and applications that are limited to internal users, must be licensed under SharePoint Server 2013 SALs. “External users” means users that are not either (i) your customer’s employees, or (ii) your customer’s onsite contractors or agents. All other users are “internal users.”

The first sentence almost put him over the edge “ALL content, information, and applications by internal must also be accessible to external” He called SPLA 911 and got help.  He owed two years of SQL and SharePoint user licenses, not processor.  Why?  All content was different for each individual user.  No content was the same; user license would apply.  If the company had a public site with the same information, and everyone sees the same thing, he could have used the processor license to cover everything.

Poor Dave…he lost his job, his company owed thousands of dollars in underreported licenses, and his dog and wife were still upset with him from waking them up in the middle of the night.

Moral of the story –

1. Service Providers (and resellers) get mixed up by the definition of “external user.” External user under SPLA is not your customer, but your customer’s customer. (the end customer). All information must be accessible by the external user and your customer. SPLA is not always the same as volume licensing.

2. Never…under any circumstance…wake your wife up in the middle of the night.

Don’t be Dave…

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
6 Comments

Posted by on March 2, 2014 in SharePoint

 

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New Reporting Portal

19 Feb

Thought this was a simple way to report SPLA licenses

You can email the team to learn more at SPLA.US@softwareone.com

 
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Posted by on February 19, 2014 in Uncategorized

 

New DaaS information for SPLA

13 Feb

Thinking about offering Desktop as a Service? Pay attention to how you are allowed to license the solution in a hosted environment before implementing! I highlighted below two ways in which you can offer hosted dekstops and only one way to provide desktops in a non virtualized environment.

1. Using SPLA- You have the right to provide a desktop experience in a shared environment using Windows Server and RDS. In this model, you will need to license Windows by processor and RDS for each user. In addition, you can add Office under SPLA for each user as well. No, this is NOT Office 365. but Office under SPLA.

2. Dedicated Outsourcing- Under this model, the end customer has licenses for Windows client OS with SA or VDA subscription under separate volume licensing contract. Great read from my friend at microsoftlicensereview.com – you can check it out Here As a service provider, you must deploy and manage the licenses on their behalf within a physically isolated hardware environment. The end customer must provide the appropriate number of CALs for their virtual desktop. The Windows OS does not have license mobility rights. Ugh.

3. Rent the Desktop using SPLA – Probably a last resort for SPLA partners. Renting a desktop would require you (the service provider)to have a PC that your company owns that already has a qualified OEM license installed, and use Windows desktop OS for SPLA and Office to rent it out. This is only available per a rental addendum. If you are renting desktops today without an addendum, please contact your reseller.

Last, new language in the SPUR states that if you are providing hosted desktops you must explicitly identify that you are providing this using Windows Server, not the desktop license in your marketing materials. This is new in the SPUR. There’s a lot of compliance issues with hosting desktops, this is a way for Microsoft and your customer to know what they are actually getting.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
5 Comments

Posted by on February 13, 2014 in DaaS

 

Self Hosted Rights and Office

04 Feb

The other day I was on a call with a customer who developed a financial application that takes a customer’s information and then reports it back from Excel.  The goal would be to have it deployed via a web browser, possibly using SharePoint.  Immediately I thought of Office Web App.  Browser based, users could not only read it but edit it as well, sounds like a perfect fit  What about the licensing?  Since this is their own Intellectual Property (IP) I thought of the self hosted rights for volume licensing.  SPLA might be too expensive since users could not be tracked. This is where we got stuck. 

Self hosted is a software assurance benefit. It allows volume licensing customers to host their application that runs on Microsoft technology to third parties. I included the terms and conditions directly from the Product Use Rights (PUR) at the bottom of this post (in case you are really bored) but in my opinion this will allow developers to continue to build their applications and utilize volume licensing that offers the greater discount.

As a SAM manager, I was engaged by the customer to review both past and current licensing.  Since this was a new offering, nothing was licensed or even deployed yet.   Whew…Rule #1 – before building a datacenter make sure the solution fits the licensing. Secondly, this is being provided as a service, not simply allowing external users to access.

What did we advise? In order for a solution to qualify as “self-hosted” all applications must be self hosted eligible. Unfortunately, Office does not qualify. Ugh. There goes that option. Now we must look at SPLA for everything (one unified solution as defined in the PUR). The problem with SPLA is you must license Office STD or PRO to enable Office Web Apps. To add more complexity, Office in a server environment is licensed by user (SPLA) Since user count is expected to be very high, this does not seem to be an economical solution. What I proposed was to get rid of Office. That’s right, I recommended they remove it from the solution and use Open Office. The solution worked and met the compliance guidelines set forth by Microsoft.

In conclusion, I hated my recommendation but went with it in order to be compliant. Microsoft Office is a superior product to “Open Office” If only Microsoft would allow Office to be self hosted eligible, I think it would benefit the service provider, Microsoft, and more importantly the end customer.

Bottom line- make sure if you have your OWN application (not license someone else’s) and you decide to use volume licensing to host, make sure all software is eligible or risk BIG compliance risk.

Thanks for reading.

SPLA Man

From the PUR
You must have the required Microsoft licenses and maintain Software Assurance coverage for:
• the Self-Hosted Applications run as part of the Unified Solution; and
• all access licenses used to make the Unified Solution available to external users (See Universal License Terms, Definitions).
All Microsoft software used to create and deliver the Unified Solution must:
• be licensed through a Volume Licensing program that is subject to these license terms (e.g., Enterprise Agreement, Select Plus Agreement, Open License Agreement) and not any other (e.g., Services Provider License Agreement, Independent Software Vendor Royalty License and Distribution Agreement); and
• be marked as ‘Yes’ for ‘Self Hosting of Applications Allowed’ in these license terms
Your software must:
• add significant and primary functionality to the Self-Hosted Applications that are part of the Unified Solution (dashboards, HTML editors, utilities, and similar technologies are not a primary service and/or application of a Unified Solution);
• be the principal service and/or application, and sole point of access, to the Unified Solution;
• be delivered over the Internet or a private network from your datacenter to end users. The Self-Hosted Applications component may not be loaded onto the end user’s device; and
• be owned, not licensed, by you, except that your software may include non-substantive third party software that is embedded in, and operates in support of, your software.

 
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Posted by on February 4, 2014 in Compliance, Self Hosted

 

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Links to vendor websites and other blogs

17 Jan

Here’s a list of resources I think are worth checking out. Not all pertain to SPLA specifically, but in the world of IT – all licensing programs find a way to relate to one another. Check it out.

Microsoft SPLA Program
http://www.microsoft.com/hosting

Microsoft Marketing Campaigns
http://www.readytogomicrosoft.com

Great Microsoft Volume Licensing Blog
http://www.microsoftlicensereview.com/

TechNet
http://blogs.technet.com/b/volume-licensing/

SPLA Reseller (I work for them with SAM) There is a free compliance check where the team will review your order and ensure you are licensing correctly and the most cost effective way. http://www.softwareone.com/en-us/Licensing/Microsoft-SPLA/Pages/default.aspx

SPLA Reseller Email – SPLA.us@softwareone.com

VMware Service Provider Program
http://www.vmware.com/partners/service-provider.html

Citrix CSP Program
http://www.citrix.com/partner-programs/service-provider.html

Citrix Marketing Tools
http://www.citrix.com/csptoolkit.com

Citrix/Microsoft DaaS Whitepapers, etc.
http://www.Citrix.com/Microsoft

Hope this helps

SPLA Man

 
1 Comment

Posted by on January 17, 2014 in Compliance, In My Opinion

 

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Audit!!!

10 Jan

If you haven’t received an audit inventation, consider yourself lucky.  Publishers are auditing everyone, from volume licensing to SPLA, audits are happening and it’s best you be prepared.

I am often asked “What steps are entailed in an audit and how much is this going to cost me?”  Both questions have undetermined variables tied to them.  I said this before, but you must look at your datacenter from an auditors perspective.  What would they want to see if I am audited?   Here’s my advice, (& take it for what it’s worth), but if I knew audits were happening, I would want to keep track of all users that have access to the software and ensure those that do not have access truly do not have access! As an example, I’m hosting SharePoint to 10 users and only 5 of those users have access to Enterprise features – therefore I only need to report 5 right?  Maybe- but what happens in some weird way they could possibly access the Enterprise features?  You would true up all licensing not reported and probably have an additional fee on top of it!Secondly, if I was using SQL, I would double check and see if VMs can migrate to different hosts.  Third, I would get a record of end user agreements and ensure software assurance is active for whatever products they are using under “license mobility.”  Last, and probably the most important – be careful of using a third party for audit support.  It may look like they helped – but in the end …did they? Email me a blaforge@splalicensing.com and I can explain.

Thanks,

SPLA Man

 
4 Comments

Posted by on January 10, 2014 in Compliance

 

Citrix Summit?

05 Jan

Would you be attending the Citrix Summit next week in Orlando, Florida?  Would love to meet.  You can email me at blaforge@splalicensing.com.  Thanks for reading!

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on January 5, 2014 in Uncategorized

 

Pondering thoughts this holiday season

19 Dec

As 2013 quickly comes to a close, I wanted to pass along  a note to thank you for reading this blog and wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday season.  I hope you find the articles useful and I appreciate all the feedback/comments.  Your comments help me with my writing and I know I learn more from you than you probably learn from me.

This holiday season, be grateful for what we have – give a hug to someone who needs it and a smile to someone who doesn’t expect it. So a toast to 2013 and here’s to a prosperous and successful 2014!  As always, thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

SPLA Man

 
4 Comments

Posted by on December 19, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

Office needs mobility rights

13 Dec

The number one post on splalicensing.com is “Office 365 under SPLA”  To date over 20,000 users have read it, several have commented on it, and many more are still asking – what am I missing and why can’t I offer “SPLA Office” in the same fashion as Office 365?

Microsoft recently announced mobility rights for Remote Desktop Services  (RDS).  I wrote about it here I think that’s a great move by Microsoft as it provides more flexibility for both service providers and consumers.  In my opinion, we need Office mobility rights, and we needed it yesterday.

Think about your environment and the licensing restrictions around Office.  To legally deploy Office for a customer that has Office 365, you as a service provider would need to have your customer purchase 1 volume licensing copy of Office, install it on your server, and for each user for Office 365, they must allocate one of the five licenses (Office 365 allows 5 installations of Office on 5 devices per user) to access Office remotely.  The Office bits on Office 365 has issues with installing it on server. Thus, the reason for a volume license copy of Office.  (at least that’s my experience in the past, maybe that’s changed now) Doesn’t sound too bad.  Five devices is a lot anyways, and now with RDS mobility rights, the service provider can use the end customers RDS licenses (if they have software assurance).  YES!!!!

Ahh…but what about Office?  Does Office have mobility rights? The answer is….no.  Although the service provider can have customer RDS mobility rights, since Office is installed, the entire environment has to be dedicated.  Yes, that includes the hardware and the VM.  That’s the issue I struggle with and I am sure many of you do too.  Why offer RDS mobility rights but not Office?  This would solve some of the issues between Office 365 and the service provider community.  Office is expensive for SPLA’s, let’s allow end customers to leverage their existing volume licensing agreements to purchase it and allow service providers to host it in a shared hardware/ dedicated VM using mobility rights? Think of how many users would purchase Office under Office 365 if they did this?  Or if they didn’t purchase Office 365, they would at least need to purchase Office with Software Assurance.  Think of how many service providers would push volume licensing on behalf of Microsoft and the resellers if they allowed this? Either way Microsoft, service providers, and more importantly the end customer would win.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
19 Comments

Posted by on December 13, 2013 in License Mobility, Office 365

 

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RDS now has mobility rights!

12 Dec

Great news for service providers, Microsoft announced this week that RDS will have Software Assurance (SA) mobility rights!  This is a great move, it will allow service providers to have shared hardware, but dedicated VM’s (just like others under the license mobility program). Customers can leverage their existing volume licensing agreements (with software assurance) to install RDS in your datacenter.

Pay attention to which products are eligible for license mobility.  The products that are allowed are located in the Product Use Rights (PUR) not the SPUR, as this is a volume licensing use right, not SPLA.  To download a copy click here Service providers would still be required to report Windows under their SPLA agreement. Last, make sure your customers have active software assurance for all licenses used for license mobility!

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
2 Comments

Posted by on December 12, 2013 in License Mobility, Office 365

 

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