Help a family going through cancer treatments all the while solving a global epidemic. To find out what that epidemic is…check this out!!!
The mysterious SPLA Man is revealed (as well as his son)
Microsoft SPLA Audit Support
Article update: We created a new website called MSCloudlicensing to help SPLA and CSP partners understand the different program options and use rights available to them. The site is designed to be a collaborative platform, which includes a forum to ask and answer licensing questions, document library, and licensing articles. It’s more in depth than a simple blog. Check it out, it’s free! www.mscloudlicensing.com
Document Library: Easy to read whitepapers on licensing and best practices. What really happens in an audit? How are other service providers handling CSP and Azure? AWS licensing? https://mscloudlicensing.com/document-library/
Forum: Experts always review and answer your licensing questions. https://mscloudlicensing.com/forum/
Articles: Most of the splalicensing.com articles you are used to reading and many more on CSP, Azure, AWS, and other cloud providers.
https://mscloudlicensing.com/subscription/
It’s Microsoft’s fiscal year end, which means it’s time for the auditors to dust off their pens and pocket protectors to find out which SPLA partners are under licensed, over licensed (yeah right) or misunderstood (every SPLA customer that has ever signed a SPLA agreement) the license use rights. If you need assistance, please let us know! Info@splalicensing.com and we can help you navigate the treacherous waters called Microsoft licensing.
Thanks for reading.
SPLA Man
New VCPP Update for Service Providers
Article update: We created a new website called MSCloudlicensing to help SPLA and CSP partners understand the different program options and use rights available to them. The site is designed to be a collaborative platform, which includes a forum to ask and answer licensing questions, document library, and licensing articles. It’s more in depth than a simple blog. Check it out, it’s free! www.mscloudlicensing.com
- Document Library: Easy to read whitepapers on licensing and best practices. What really happens in an audit? How are other service providers handling CSP and Azure? AWS licensing? https://mscloudlicensing.com/document-library/
• Forum: Experts always review and answer your licensing questions. https://mscloudlicensing.com/forum/
• Articles: Most of the splalicensing.com articles you are used to reading and many more on CSP, Azure, AWS, and other cloud providers.
https://mscloudlicensing.com/subscription/
VCPP Update:
Thought we would provide an update to the VCPP program for VMWare. The five point bundle in VCPP has been discontinued April 15, 2018. There is a 6 month grace period for current partners. Important dates:
April 15 2018 – End of availability for new providers
September 19, 2018 – End of general support for 5.5
October 31, 2018 – completely removed
How are you limiting new customers for 5.5 bundle?
Starting April usage reporting, the bundle will not be available for any new service providers. It’s also in the product use guide for VCPP. If you were already using it, have the signed contract, you can continue to use it for 6 months.
Hope this provide insight. Questions? Ask your VCCP reseller – SPLA man only knows SPLA and CSP 🙂
How’s your CSP business?
(1I guess the better question to ask Is the CSP program right for your business? When Microsoft announced the QMTH program last year, I remember thinking – finally! Microsoft is allowing hosting partners the ability to resell Windows 10 in a multitenant environment! Let the flood gates open! Well, the flood gates opened. Fast forward to today and Microsoft is a bit of a pickle. Authorizing a “partner” for CSP Direct is one thing, making sure they are successful is another.
Has Microsoft helped or hurt your hosting practice? On one hand, the ability to offer Windows 10 is great but on the other hand, is it worth the headache of CSP? Are you sure you want to get in the licensing business or the reseller business? From the conversations I have had with hosting providers, CSP has been a difficult sell. There’s a lot of investment resources, support, and licensing to be able to educate your customers on a low margin transaction. Signing up for CSP Direct to become QMTH authorized is probably not going to help long turn. Maybe CSP Indirect is the way to go?
CSP Indirect allows you to partner with another reseller who can offer the licenses on your behalf. I like to think of it as white labeling their authorization to your customers. The reseller provides the support but you control the billing. There are also resellers who get creative – they provide the licenses, you provide the support. That may be the best route since managed services brings in a higher margin than software sales. The drawback of CSP Indirect is you are no longer eligible for QMTH.
What’s ironic is Microsoft finally solved the VDI question hosting providers have been asking for over a decade but now unleashed an entire new problem in CSP. Maybe some day this will all make sense. In the meantime, thanks for reading.
SPLA Man
SQL Developer Edition: Be very…very…careful
Article update: We created a new website called MSCloudlicensing to help SPLA and CSP partners understand the different program options and use rights available to them. The site is designed to be a collaborative platform, which includes a forum to ask and answer licensing questions, document library, and licensing articles. It’s more in depth than a simple blog. Check it out, it’s free! www.mscloudlicensing.com
- Document Library: Easy to read whitepapers on licensing and best practices. What really happens in an audit? How are other service providers handling CSP and Azure? AWS licensing? https://mscloudlicensing.com/document-library/
• Forum: Experts always review and answer your licensing questions. https://mscloudlicensing.com/forum/
• Articles: Most of the splalicensing.com articles you are used to reading and many more on CSP, Azure, AWS, and other cloud providers.
https://mscloudlicensing.com/subscription/
Here’s a brief rundown with SQL Developer edition and what to be aware of if you decide to deploy it.
- It’s free – you can download it for zero costs
- It’s a compliance nightmare – When you deploy MAP tool in an audit, the scan typically will reveal a SQL Enterprise installation not SQL Developer edition. Most features of Developer are found in Enterprise which brings on more confusion. If you are audited, you must prove this license is for non-production environments. Which brings us to the next bullet point.
- What is a non production environment? Any time you host Microsoft software it is defined as “production.” Whether or not you charge for this access is irrelevant. (Microsoft doesn’t care if you make money off of it). If you do internal development, that’s non production. If you host a dev environment for the benefit of your customer, now that is software as a service and would be considered production.
- Microsoft made SQL Development free in 2016. For those that need prior versions, you would need to access them through Visual Studio subscriptions. Again, for non-production environments. Otherwise, you can report Visual Studio through SPLA; per user, per month.
- To play it safe, isolate the hardware for any customer’s that want to transfer their free version of SQL Dev to your datacenter environment.
One might ask if it’s free, what’s the penalty if I am found out of compliant? If you were deploying SQL Dev for production use and Microsoft finds out, you would have to true up using SQL Enterprise. In other words, if you installed SQL Dev in 2014, get audited in 2017, Microsoft could force you to true up SQL Enterprise dating back to when you first installed Developer edition. That’s not a very cheap solution!
Is this confusing? Yes. You have to make a decision of whether or not this is production or non-production environment. Do not install SQL Developer because it’s free. It may cost you in the long run.
Thank you for reading,
SPLA Man
Answers to Your Cloud Licensing Questions
Will Azure be part of the SPLA program?
I wouldn’t think so and wouldn’t know how they could incorporate the two. Azure is Microsoft hosted and SPLA is partnered. Microsoft will want to keep SPLA and Azure separate.
Is Azure Stack part of SPLA?
Azure Stack by itself is not part of SPLA. What’s part of SPLA is the Windows licenses. As a service provider, you could deploy Azure Stack, pay the base consumption rate, and use Windows licensing with SPLA. In fact, I think it’s less expensive to do it this way.
If my customer wants to use their own Windows license on Azure Stack, do they also require CAL’s?
Yes. You need to pay attention to the Product Terms to ensure compliance. As an example, volume licensing prohibits hosting. You cannot install your own Windows licenses through volume licensing and host using Azure Stack.
Does Office 365 qualify for the SAL for SA product in SPLA?
The only Office 365 product that is eligible for SAL for SA is Skype.
Is SPLA pricing going up?
Yes and will not be decreasing anytime soon.
Since AWS offers dedicated hardware, could I transfer my customer’s license to their datacenter without Software Assurance?
Yes. If its dedicated hardware Software Assurance is not required.
What about Azure?
No, you would need Software Assurance.
Will Microsoft finally allow MSDN to be licensed in my datacenter?
Probably not. Although if you use Azure, MSDN is eligible to be transferred.
If I sell CSP through 2-Tier distributor, can I sign the QMTH addendum?
No. You must be CSP 1 – Tier to qualify for QMTH.
Can I outsource support for certain software through CSP?
Yes. You an resell the solutions you can support and leverage another partner for support for other products.
Thanks for reading,
SPLA Man
More SPLA Questions…More Answers.
Here is a list of some of the questions we received this month. Enjoy!
Why does Microsoft not allow a SPLA SQL VM to be installed in a public cloud? I understand if you were licensing the physical layer, but if you want to install on a VM, you can easily allocate the number of cores and report accordingly. Any ideas?
No. Honestly there is no reason outside of it’s just prohibited. You cannot license SPLA cores/processors in public clouds even if the VM is dedicated.
What can be installed in Azure through SPLA licensing?
Anything that is licensed by SAL can be moved to Azure. For your end customers, anything that has Software Assurance and is license mobility eligible can be transferred including: Windows 10 E3 (QMTH), Office 365 Pro Plus (QMTH) and MSDN. Your end customers can also leverage Azure HUB to get discounted pricing for the Windows Servers they purchased with SA. Check out the Azure FAQ site https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/licensing-faq/
Is Microsoft going to discontinue SPLA?
Nah. I bet it will be merged into a new program though. Just a hunch.
I received a compliance notification the other day. Am I in trouble?
Depends on the type of notification and if you are out of compliant :). If you have questions, we can review it with you. Just email info@splalicensing.com
Can I report Windows 2016 but run Windows 2012?
Yes. No problem there. What you cannot do is license Windows 2012 and run 2016. Don’t do that.
Thanks for reading,
SPLA Man
Top News in September
Here’s the latest news of the month for all MSP’s and SPLA providers. Enjoy!
SQL 2017
This month is a month we will remember for the rest of our lives. That’s right, today SQL 2017 is available to run on…a non-Microsoft system?
From the licensing guide: “SQL Server 2017 now supports deployment on RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Ubuntu, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). The SQL Server 2017 SKUs are platform agnostic, so customers can run the software on either Windows or Linux.” (check it out here)
What this means for those anti-Microsoft lovers is a customer who demands SQL can now install SQL 2017 on a Linux machine and not report Windows. The machine cannot run any Windows guest VM’s for it not to be reported. Pay attention to that last sentence as we get asked a lot about licensing individual VM’s instead of the actual host. In Windows licensing, you license the physical host, not the VM’s. If there are 100 Linux VM’s and only 1 Windows VM, you must license the host with Windows Datacenter to be in compliant.
Azure Stack Availability
The long await is over – Azure Stack is now shipping through the OEM channel (Dell, Lenovo, HPE) You can read more about this announce here From a licensing perspective, I think it is less expensive to license Windows through SPLA than pay as you use model. It’s more of a predictable cost in my opinion. This is one way Microsoft is attempting to extend Azure (public cloud) into your private cloud and have the best of both worlds.
“Hit Refresh”
Satya Nadella “Hit Refresh” book is available at a time when we are all in a strange way, hitting refresh. The cloud transformation is only getting more complex – hybrid, dedicated, Google, AWS, Azure, every company is transforming to try and get the slightest edge over their competitors. I look forward to reading it and every dollar goes to Microsoft charities. Regardless of what you think of Microsoft, Satya seems like one of the good guys. You can check out more about the book here
More to come –
Thanks for reading,
SPLA Man
Predicting the future of SPLA
The one thing consistent with Microsoft is change. Attempting to predict what will happen tomorrow is just as difficult as predicting what will happen two years from now. That being said, Microsoft is giving hints as to what the landscape of SPLA and CSP will look like in the not so distance future. Without further delay, here’s my predictions:
- Microsoft will increase SPLA pricing at some point. It’s inevitable. See point number 2.
- There will be a big push to move SPLA providers to CSP and it’s happening now. CSP pricing is not going up any time soon.
- CSP membership will be part of the requirement to join SPLA. Going out on a limb here, but if the goal is to move SPLA to CSP, I think this would be a good way to do it.
- CSP requirements will be more streamlined and easier to obtain. See point number 2.
- SPLA compliance will increase. See point number 2.
- SPLA Resellers will put more focus on CSP than SPLA. See point number 2.
Good news? I think it’s time for SPLAlicensing.com to get a facelift. It’s been several years using the same format. What features would you like to see? What topics interest you? What do you think will happen in SPLA? Email info@splalicensing.com and would love any suggestions.
Thanks for reading,
SPLA Man
Top 5 Licensing questions…Answered
- If a customer has 4 x SQL Server Standard (8 cores), does that mean I will also need to have 4 x SQL-SAL?
There’s no server + CAL model in SPLA. You license either per core or per user depending on the product. Remember, SAL is not licensed per server, but for each user that has access to that server. Your question indicates you might believe a SAL is licensed per server which is not true.
2. Is MSDN available through SPLA? Is it through Azure?
MSDN is not available in SPLA, but you can license the individual components through SPLA. If an end-user would like to bring their MSDN license over to your datacenter, you must dedicate the solution for your customer. Yes, Amazon must play by the same rules. Oddly enough, Azure (which is shared) does allow MSDN to be transferred over to their datacenter.
3. I received an audit notification. Should I respond?
Yes. But don’t work on their time, work on yours.
4. If I signed the SCA addendum, do I need to sign the new QMTH addendum?
Unless you are planning on hosting Windows 10 you do not need to sign the new addendum.
5. If I buy from a CSP indirect partner, do I qualify for QMTH?
No. Your company must be CSP 1 tier authorized in order to qualify.
Thanks for reading,
SPLA Man
SPLA Licensing 