Note – When we discuss License Mobility, we mean leveraging end customer licensing in shared environments.
With the new Flexible Virtualization Benefit, what is the reason for License Mobility? Great question. There is no need for License Mobility. However, if you use a Listed Provider (Google, AWS, Alibaba, and kind of Azure), you must use the License Mobility form. If you are a non-listed provider or an authorized outsourcer) you can use the Flexible Virtualization Benefit. There is no form to complete, no authorization.
What about compliance? Contrary to what Microsoft or maybe a consultant will tell you, if you are hosting anything, you need to track it. In an audit, you have to prove the way you are licensing. If you are not reporting the product in SPLA, how are you reselling it? If you say, “Hey, it’s my customer’s license,” they will ask you to prove it. I also think this is a huge opportunity to educate your customers. Imagine getting audited. Auditors ask you to verify the licenses, and you go back to your customers and tell them they are out of compliance. What is your customer going to do? That’s right. They are going to Joe’s Hosting down the street, can careless about compliance, and report only ten dollars a month to stay “under the radar.” On the other hand, if you educate your customers and look at different ways to reduce their licensing spend, Joe’s Hosting will be out of business. Take care of your customers; they will take care of you.
Thanks for reading,
SPLA Man
Tags: Alibaba, audit, AWS, Azure, compliance, Flexible virtualization benefit, Google, Hosting, License Mobility, License Mobility Discontiued, Listed Provider, OctopusCloud, spla, SPLA Man
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
Tags: AWS, Azure, Azure stack, Cloud Solution Provider Program, CSP, Digital Transformation, Google, Hit Refresh, Hybrid cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Licensing, Microsoft SQL Server, Satya Nadella, spla, SQL 2017
As we enter the new FY at Microsoft, I thought I would put together a list of topics that’s on everyone’s mind.
- SPLA going away? I don’t think so. There’s too many SPLA partners to make an entire program disappear. I also think this is one of the benefits Microsoft has over all it’s competitors. If a customer wants to have an application hosted in one datacenter and use Azure for disaster recovery – Microsoft wins. If Amazon is running Windows workloads (which they are) they must pay Microsoft for that usage through SPLA. I also think SPLA is a way to move customers to Azure. If you are a SPLA customer who just went through an audit, the SPLA customer might ask themselves why they continue to host at all? Let’s use Azure and my compliance problems go away. (they don’t but that’s for another article).
- Is CSP/QMH really a must? I guess the jury is still out (it hasn’t even launched yet for the partner community – September 2017). There are a lot of restrictions to this program to consider – underlying Windows Pro licenses, becoming CSP direct authorized, not using CSP Indirect, RDS licenses when deploying VDI, etc. If you decide to go down this route, pay close attention to what you can and cannot do.
- Will SPLA pricing increase? Yes. No doubt about it. Nothing stays the same for too long.
- How can AWS win the cloud war? Amazon has a revenue first, profit second mentality in my opinion. Just look at their last earnings report (2017). They can buy their way into the SaaS market at any cost. They are not just a cloud company, they are an everything company. They have the leverage to really get creative with their marketing and win businesses over.
- How can Google beat AWS and Microsoft? Google hasn’t scratched the surface with their footprint in the enterprise space. One slip up by the other cloud powerhouses and Google becomes a very attractive offering. Google has the power, the money, and the brand to make headway. Like AWS, they are not just a cloud/software company, they are an everything company. I really think Google will surprise a lot of analyst in the near future with their cloud growth.
- How can Microsoft beat them all? Any organization that uses Microsoft software in a hosted environment must pay Microsoft for that luxury. They already have a large footprint and very large customer base to move to Azure. They also have 30k + SPLA partners (estimate) that are being used to sell their solution.
- Will SPLA Man be able to afford a nice piece of jewelry for Mrs. SPLA Man? For all the single women who read SPLAlicensing.com, don’t make the same mistake Mrs. SPLA Man made. Poor Mrs. SPLA Man, when I first met her at the bar, she thought SPLA was something I created for the space station. Space Program Living Association. S.P.L.A. – kind of like a home owner’s association but for space. (I am not sure where she got that idea). I do have a cool blog??!
Thanks for reading,
SPLA Man
Tags: Amazon Web Services, AWS, Azure, Cloud Solution Provider Program, CSP, Google, google cloud, Microsoft Audit, Microsoft Hosting, Multitenant Hosting Rights, QMH, Qualified Multi-tenant addendum, Service Provider License Agreement, spla, SPLA Price Increase
We read article after article, use rights after use rights, to provide you the best and accurate information. The Cloud Insider News takes articles written by you and others to tell your story and help educate the community. In this edition, we take a look at Hosted Email. Have a hot topic? Email info@splalicensing.com
Tags: Abovethelaw, Cloud Computing, CRN, desktop as a service, Email, Email Archive, Email Protection, Exchange Enterprise, Exchange Enterprise Plus, Exchange Server, Exchange Standard Plus, Exchange Standard SAL, Forbes, Google, google cloud, Hosted Exchange, Intermedia, Intermedia Email, Microsoft Cloud, Military technologies, MSP, MSPmentor, Office 365, Phishing and SPAM, RapidScale, Vaultastic, VOnage, Wired, Zimbra, Zimbra.org
In this edition of The Cloud Insider Times, you will find articles on the likes of Google, Amazon, IBM, Veeam, and the infamous Shared Computer Activation (among others) If your company would like to be included in future articles, please email info@splalicensing.com
Tags: Amazon, AWS, Azure, BetaNews, bluelogix, BusinessCloud Media, Cloud Computing, Cloud Solution Program, Cloudyn, CNBC, Computer Business Review, CSP, Forbes, Google, google cloud, Healthcare, Microsoft, Microsoft Cloud, Microsoft SPLA, myanalytics, Office, Office 365, Private Cloud, shared computer activation, The Register, Yahoo, ZDnet
Last month, Microsoft held their annual Hosting Summit in Bellevue, WA. The good news is SPLA is not going away. Last quarter marked the 20th straight QTR of double digit growth for Microsoft SPLA. What is changing is the competitive landscape. Microsoft does not see SPLA partners as a competitor per se, they see SPLA as one of the biggest competitive advantages over other cloud offerings (IBM, AWS, Google, etc). They have over 30,000 SPLA partners worldwide, and they believe they can leverage those 30,000 partners to offer different cloud solutions.
Microsoft is betting big on what they define as “hybrid cloud” and that’s where they see service providers (SPLA) playing a significant part. Hybrid cloud is not just offloading workloads from on premise to another datacenter, it’s about leveraging different technologies to deliver solutions. As an example, late last year Microsoft offered solution called “Azure Stack” You can read about it here.
It’s the same APIs and same code as what Microsoft delivers through Azure. From a licensing perspective, Azure Stack is cheaper through SPLA (Windows) than it would be to pay through consumption. It will be available to offer this summer through the hardware manufacturers but you can download it now to test out.
The other big bet is SQL, and especially around the feature of stretch database. In laymen terms, it’s taking data that is not often consumed and offloading it to the cloud, reducing resources and consumption on servers locally. You can read more about stretch database from our friends at MSDN
All said, it was good to meet old friends and say hello to new ones at this event. If you were at the hosting summit and you did not have the chance to meet the infamous SPLA Man, email me at info@splalicensing.com. Would love to learn more about your offerings and how we can work together to make licensing simple.
Thanks for reading,
SPLA Man
Tags: AWA, Azure stack, CSP, Google, google cloud, Hosting Summit, Hybrid cloud, IBM, Microsoft Hosting, Microsoft Hosting Summit, Microsoft SPLA, Microsoft SQL, MSDN, Office 365, spla, SQL, SQL Server, SQL virtualization, Stretch Database, Windows 2016, Windows Server
SPLA Licensing 