Here’s another post on license mobility. I am not purposely trying to be redundant, but majority of compliance issues come from customer owned licenses. It’s important that you, your sellers, and more importantly your customers understand this program in its entirety. So here we go!
License Mobility, in its simplest terms, is a software assurance benefit that allows customers to migrate their existing licenses to a third-party data center. Third party data center is a service provider. (Amazon, Azure, Joe’s Hosting, etc). Primarily this applies to application servers – Lync, Exchange, SharePoint, and CRM. It also will include products such as System Center, SQL, and Remote Desktop Services. I encourage you to check out the Microsoft website http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/license-mobility.aspx for more information. Since this website is dedicated to the service provider community, I thought I would put together some common mistakes service providers make when deploying license mobility. Fasten your seat belt, there might be a few surprises in this list.
Fact #1
License Mobility is an addendum to your SPLA. This is NOT automatically granted. If your company is not on this list, make sure you sign the addendum! Download the list here At a hosting summit several years ago, Microsoft announced this program to a room full of service providers. You should have seen the look on everyone’s face as they made the announcement; almost hear the thoughts running through their minds “Wait a minute, this wasn’t legal before this announcement!!, We were doing this for years!” That’s right, if you are hosting customer owned licenses in a shared hardware infrastructure/dedicated VM, make sure the products are license mobility eligible (see the SPUR) and make sure you sign the addendum! I said this before, if Microsoft allowed all products to be installed on a shared hardware infrastructure, why would they have license mobility? If you have customers that are bringing licenses into your data center and are not mobility eligible, make sure it’s dedicated. (VM and hardware)
Fact #2
You need to make sure your end customer submits the verification form. Why? It’s a requirement by Microsoft. Essentially there are three times your end customer should complete and submit a License Verification form: (This is from the verification form guide).
1. “When you deploy eligible licenses with an Authorized Mobility Partner. A new form is required each time you deploy additional licenses.”
2.” When you renew your Software Assurance.”
3.” When you renew your Volume Licensing Agreement.”
“The form can include multiple enrollments or license numbers under a single agreement, provided that they are supported by the same channel partner. However, you should complete a License Verification form for each agreement under which you are using License Mobility (for example, an Enterprise Agreement and a Select Plus agreement).”
How many verification’s forms have been completed? Very few if any. Since this is not completed, you (the service provider) can be on the hook. If anything else, please make sure you make this mobility guide available to your customer to review. Check it out here
Fact #3
When end customer use license mobility, they are transferring the licenses into your data center. When you transfer licenses, they can only transfer the licenses away from your data center once every 90 days. Good news – you keep the customer for a minimum of 90 days! So let’s say they decide to go back to their own data center; same story – once every 90 days. From the License Mobility FAQ Guide.
“Customers must assign licenses for a minimum of 90 days, after which they may move their licensed software from a service provider’s shared servers back to their local servers or to another service provider’s shared servers. Instances run under a particular license must be run in a single server farm and can be moved to another server farm, but not on a short-term basis (90 days or less). A server farm includes up to two data centers each physically located either in a time zone that is within four hours of the local time zone of the other [Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and not Daylight Savings Time (DST)], and/or within the European Union (EU) and/or European Free Trade Association (EFTA).”
Fact #4
You need to include educational materials to your customers during the purchasing process. I did not make this up, it’s part of the addendum you need to sign to take part in the program. Azure does this via their website http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/license-mobility. Amazon does this as well http://aws.amazon.com/windows/mslicensemobility/ Very few on the partner list makes this readily available on their website. In fact, out of 10 random selected partners on the list, none have a written statement on mobility. Perhaps you make this as part of your agreement with your customer; but not sure why you wouldn’t make this as part of your marketing strategy. If you look up “authorized mobility partners” why wouldn’t you want them directed to your site? To prove my point I looked up “authorized mobility partners” and only a handful of actual hosters show up in the top searches. Make it your company.
Fact #5
I’ll make this one short; Windows does not have mobility rights. You need to report Windows server via SPLA.
I know I am beating a dead horse with license mobility. I just feel this is a big miss by providers and customers. The bigger miss is SAL for SA – check out my old post here
I hope you find these articles helpful. Have any concerns, questions, or just want a second opinion – feel free to email me at blaforge@splalicensing.com
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