I had a dream the other night, SPLA was going away. I woke up in horror. My wife thought something dramatic happened, and in a way, it did. In my dream there were pricing discounts, incentives, metered pricing, and security updates for hosters, not one benefit was part of the SPLA program. When I woke up, I was thankful it was just a dream until I Binged (man I can’t say that) Googled around and found Azure Arc. Is SPLA gone? No. But maybe there’s opportunities hosters should consider. In this article, let’s dive into the licensing side of Azure Arc and how it may benefit SPLA providers.
I like to think of Azure Arc as a bridge between your infrastructure and Azure. Maybe it’s the “arc” in the title or I just plagiarized it from the Microsoft website. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-arc#overview either way, there’s a connection because it manages IT resources in your cloud, Joe’s Hosting Cloud, or another third-party using the same tools you would use to manage Azure hosted resources. So let’s take a look at how a SPLA partner might use this technology ,where does the licensing come into play, and the benefits.
I think we can all agree SQL is one of the most expensive products at Microsoft and managing SQL Server can be just as expensive. Azure Arc allows a hoster to manage all SQL Servers deployed in the hosters datacenter from, you guessed it, Azure. A hoster is still “hosting” SQL Server but using Azure resources to manage it. From the Azure portal, a hoster can query deployment information, get detailed information on the number of cores, or maybe they want to know which editions are running and where.
Ok, we get the management piece of it. But managing doesn’t replace SPLA. That statement is correct. When Azure Arc is enabled, customers, hosters, whoever has the ability to purchase SQL using a pay as you go model through Microsoft directly or CSP such as the CSP Hoster program. Yes, pay as you go model is SPLA, but one benefit over SPLA is pay as you use. In other words, if you are looking to save costs on SQL Server for development projects or maybe there’s times in high demand and times of low demand, hosters might benefit. With SPLA, if you spin up a server on the 28th of the month, you have to report that license as if you deployed it on the 1st of the month. You also receive incentives, rebates, and the deployment of Azure Arc goes towards your Azure revenue credit. One other side note, is end of security updates are also included as an add on which is not available in SPLA. (Your end customers can purchase ESU and deploy it in a SPLA providers datacenter though).
Ok, but the biggest benefits of SPLA is unlimited virtualization rights. And that is a BIG benefit. You can’t license SQL Enterprise on the host level and deploy SQL Standard virtual machines using CSP licenses. I also think Windows Datacenter in SPLA is very profitable for service providers. In addition, just because the virtual machine is installed locally when using Azure Arc, data/information is relayed back to Azure. There could be compliance/security concerns. You don’t have that issue with SPLA.
SPLA has it’s place and so does CSP. Can’t we all just get along? Either way, Microsoft still gets paid.
Thanks for reading,
SPLA Man
SPLA Licensing 