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Tag Archives: License Mobility

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

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

 

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No More Cloud!

08 Oct

Private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud, ominous cloud, or whatever the cloud, maybe now is the time to create a new buzz word to describe your offering.  People  have their own opinion on what “cloud” really means, and this leads to even more confusion. I believe the term “cloud” was first used by Eric Schmidt with Google, who in conversation said “cloud.”  (Don’t quote me on that).

Regardless of the kind of cloud you market, what you are really saying is “I have a solution to your problem that I can help you with.” It used to be the cloud was synonymous with storage. According to a recent Gartner study, over 50% of enterprises will have some sort of applications hosted somewhere else.  I can guarantee not all of that is storage!

Successful companies that host information for other organizations do more than just provide a cloud environment, they provide a solution. Companies who consider themselves a trusted solution provider as oppose to just a cloud provider (or even a service provider) will win. “Trusted” is the key word.  The biggest obstacle remains security.  Can they trust you with their data?

The question you need to ask yourself is what differentiates your offering from the 8,500 other hosting companies? Keep in mind -everyone is 99.9% uptime (yeah right). The entire IT landscape makes up roughly $2 trillion dollars. According to the Microsoft site, Azure signs up over 1,000 customers (not users) a day and Office 365 claims that one in four enterprise customers use it. It’s not just Microsoft. Take a look at Amazon, VMWare, and Google. Everyone wants to be “Cloud.” Check out http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/cloud/index.html

In my article, “Office 365 Under SPLA” I expressed you need to embrace the big players, not compete. As an example, Amazon and Azure will not deploy RDS, you need to provide RDS via SPLA. Maybe that’s an opportunity. Check out the FAQ guide for Azure http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/licensing-faq/ (especially under RDS) They provide the infrastructure, you provide the RDS licenses to the customer. Maybe the SAL for SA SKU is your route – (which I might add is NEVER reported). SAL for SA is simply a way for your customer who already made the investment in software assurance on the underlying software to pay less.  There’s also license mobility with software assurance to consider.

Here’s my point in all of this- if the IT industry is 2 trillion dollars, I want you to get a piece of that very large pie.  To do that, you have to go beyond “cloud.”  Question to consider -what are you doing to help customers with their hosted solutions that no one else is doing today? Answer that intelligently, you will win.  Maybe this is the “Solution Provider Licensing Agreement” after all.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on October 8, 2013 in In My Opinion

 

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What’s Your Licensing Strategy?

14 Jun

I love the question “What’s your cloud strategy?” It’s the new ice breaker for salespeople around the globe. My thoughts? Why bother asking customers about their cloud strategy if it does not include licensing?  The BIGGEST mistake service providers (SPLA’s) make is selling a solution first and worrying about the licensing impact later. They build data centers, talk about virtualizing, even talk about the savings of cap ex vs. op ex, but never talk about the licensing until someone brings it up or they get audited. Just because the technology enables something, does not mean you can license that way.

VDI is a prime example of this. “You can host virtual desktops as a service right? Install the desktop OS on a server and stream it? Why not? The concept has been around for years. I ‘Googled’ VDI as a service and several companies are doing this…it must be right…right?” Wrong! Yes, technically speaking you can host virtual desktops using Windows 7/8. Licensing gurus and the product user rights and the audit team will disagree with you. Unfortunately there’s no way to do this under SPLA. Next question that comes up is “why?” Wish I knew the answer, perhaps Microsoft is looking out after the OEM manufactures, but then again they launched Surface.

Microsoft is auditing everyone. There are few guarantees in life, but one guarantee is not everyone under the SPLA program is licensing correctly. Just a word of advice, know the licensing before implementing a solution.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on June 14, 2013 in Compliance, License Mobility, SPLA General

 

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Tips & Tricks of SQL 2012

11 Jun

“What’s the least favorite licensing topic at Microsoft?” If you answered SQL, you would probably be correct. It’s not overly complex, but can be very confusing; especially as it pertains to virtualization. To add to the confusion, Microsoft changed the licensing terms with the release of SQL 2012 and discontinued several products altogether. For service providers, this confusion can escalate to over/under licensing and ultimately compliance risk. Here’s a list of common mistakes service providers make with licensing SQL.

1. They have Vmotion set up in which virtual machines are moving from host to host simultaneously. Be careful! Check out license mobility rights in the SPUR and read my previous blog license mobility Virtual Machines can move from host to host but it cannot be active on two separate hosts at the same time.

2. They have a customer bring SQL into their environment (end customer owns SQL via a separate volume licensing agreement) and the service provider dedicates the virtual machine to the customer but not the physical hardware (hardware is shared). The end customer would need to have software assurance for SQL in order to take advantage of license mobility and the service provider would need to report Windows under SPLA. This is called License Mobility with Software Assurance.

3. Sign a new SPLA agreement after December 31, 2012 and continue to license SQL by processor. Once you sign a new or renew your old SPLA agreement, you are forced to license by the core, not processor. Check out my blog Why Timing Is Everything

4. They license (1) 2 core pack of SQL 2012. The minimum you need to license/report is (2) 2 core packs or 4 cores per processor. Under no circumstance can you report only two cores.

5. They don’t report SQL at all. I hear this all the time. “My customer does not directly access SQL and therefore I do not need to report it.” Wrong. If customers indirectly access any application it must be licensed. Ask yourself, “If I remove this product from my hosted solution, would it still work the same?” If you answer “no’ it needs a SPLA license.

6. Report SQL Web to support a line of business application.  SQL Web is designed for websites/web applications, not line of business applications.

Just thought I would try to answer common questions around SQL. Hope this was helpful.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on June 11, 2013 in SQL 2012

 

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Why I Love License Mobility (Farm Edition)

15 May

Life is full of little surprises, license mobility within server farms happens to be one of them. License mobility within server farms allows a service provider to take advantage of virtualization without the worry of over licensing or for that matter; under licensing.

Let’s say you have a host machine and that has (2) 6 core procs running 10 virtual machines. You want to run SQL Enterprise. You also have a second host, within the same server farm. The VMs on one machine can migrate to the other. You have to license both hosts right? Wrong! Here’s why.

The old licensing methodology would require you to license both hosts. The new methodology, would allow you to license 1. In the above example, you would need to license 12 cores of SQL Enterprise. You have to license the host with the most cores, but at least it is just the one host! What’ the caveat? You cannot have both hosts running VMs at the same time. If you do, you must license both hosts. Check out the SPUR. Not all products allow license mobility so be sure to check!

The definition of a server farm is as follows:

Assigning Licenses and Using Software within a Server Farm

You may determine the number of licenses you need, assign those licenses, and use the server software as provided in the General License Terms.  Alternatively, you may apply the use rights below.

Server Farm. A server farm consists of up to two data centers each physically located:

  • in a time zone that is within four hours of the local time zone of the other (Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and not DST), and/or
  • within the European Union (EU) and/or European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

Each data center may be part of only one server farm. You may reassign a data center from one server farm to another, but not on a short-term basis (i.e., not within 30 days of the last assignment).

Please check out the products in the SPUR to ensure the mobility rights apply. Keep in mind, not all products are eligible.  For example, SQL Web does not have mobility rights, but SQL Enterprise does.  Be Careful!

In my opinion, this is a great way to take advantage of virtualization, reduce licensing costs, but more importantly…be compliant.  If an auditor were to come knocking on the door to your datacenter, there’s not much they can say if you take advantage of unlimited virtualization rights such as Windows Datacenter and SQL Enterprise 2012.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on May 15, 2013 in License Mobility

 

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