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Tag Archives: Office 365

What’s REALLY going on with SPLA????

16 Sep

In this article, let’s review the new licensing changes in greater detail. A LOT of questions on this change, so let’s get started! As always, if you have questions, please email info@splalicensing.com

Windows Server

For starters, Windows Server licensing rule change. In the past, (not specifically for SPLA) Windows Server was only available in CSP for Windows Standard edition. Fast forward to today, CSP will now have both Standard and Datacenter options. Great!

For end customers, they also have the option to license Windows Server by virtual machine, making it easier to move Windows Server workloads to a public cloud (as long as the hoster is not a Listed Provider). Other requirement is the Windows Server MUST have Software Assurance. No SA, NO outsourcer.

My Take?

Great move although now Hosters REALLY need to educate themselves on pricing options and licensing rules. DO NOT try and do this without assistance. Think about this from an end customer perspective:


1. They can leverage their EA to move to the cloud for Windows Server. Question is do they have SA on ALL workloads and associated CALs?

2. They can move workloads such as Office, Visio, and Project as well as Windows 11. Do you know the purchasing rights and do you know for certain they have SA? Are you CSP Direct? See below for more details on Office.

3. Is it less expensive for them to buy Windows Datacenter licenses through you in SPLA instead of buying perpetual licenses? That is the big question and often overlooked.

4. How are you going to track CSP, On -premise, and SPLA?

Our team can help you identify the best option for your customers. I also believe this is a GREAT way to differentiate yourself amongst your competitors. I work with SPLA partners all over the world, the one common denominator is not understanding the licensing rules and trying to do this alone. The best option is to outsource your licensing if you are unsure of what to do and how to properly educate your customers. Need help? Email us at info@splalicensing.com

Office, Visio, Project

If your end customer has license AND SA, they can use and authorized outsourcer (you if you meet the requirements) for shared hosting. Other terms may apply so stay tuned. If your end customer has license only, you have to isolate the hardware for the customer.

My Take?

This is great considering it provides options, but tracking the licenses may be difficult. This is especially true if you use a Listed Provider such as AWS. Most of these new rules do not apply to Listed Providers so stay on top of it!

Microsoft 365

If you purchase these licenses through CSP or through volume licensing the end customer has the ability to leverage an existing Authorized Outsourcer for both dedicated and shared environments. This is not defined as License Mobility, but “Extended Use Rights”

My Take?

Same as above to be honest. Windows Server and SQL have the same benefit in CSP (sorry, forgot to mention that) but the complexity still exists. As an example, for Windows Server through CSP, not only are you purchasing the Server licenses, but you are required to buy CALs. In SPLA, no CAL requirement to host. Microsoft 365 is a big deal and will be a bigger deal once they open it up to everyone.\

Windows 11

The big news here is mobility and the removal of a Qualified Operating System for VDA deployments. There’s going to be a lot of information on this. Microsoft stated the following:

Source: Microsoft Sept 2022 training

Other announcements? Last but not least….CSP for Hoster program. Basically allows hosters to deploy and manage CSP workloads from a datacenter environment.

Must be QMTH authorized, have an active SPLA and be CSP Direct. More details on this to follow. If you have a question, I encourage you to email us at info@splalicensing.com to help walk us through your specific questions.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on September 16, 2022 in Uncategorized

 

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New Name Change for Office 365

01 Apr

Microsoft announced a renaming of the Office 365 bundles to Microsoft 365.  This will go into effect April 21.  Yeah, I know.  Just when we were getting used to the different products!

The features, pricing, and programmatic details do not change, just the name.  That being said, it is important to realize this change so you can inform your end customers.  Since the Product name changed, so will your invoice from Microsoft or your CSP Provider.

Office 365 Pro Plus is now Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise

Office 365 Business is now Microsoft 365 Apps for Business

Office 365 Business Essentials is not Microsoft 365 Business Basic

Office 365 Business Premium is now called Microsoft 365 Business Standard

Microsoft 365 Business is not Microsoft 365 Business Premium

No new changes with SPLA as it relates to Office.  Still per user per month.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 

 
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Posted by on April 1, 2020 in Cloud Solution Provider Program, Uncategorized

 

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Answers to Your Cloud Licensing Questions

07 Nov

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

 

 

 

 

 

 
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Posted by on November 7, 2017 in Top 5 Licensing Questions

 

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Top 5 Licensing questions…Answered

11 Sep
  1. 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

 
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Posted by on September 11, 2017 in Top 5 Licensing Questions

 

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Top 5 CSP Questions…Answered

24 Aug

Here are a few hot topics this week around CSP.  Enjoy!

What would happen if I sell myself Office Pro Plus through my own CSP authorization?  Can I do that?

No.  You cannot sell yourself Office 365 Pro Plus licenses.  You can purchase it through any volume licensing program or through another CSP provider.  Might be a good way to check out the competition support processes though!

If you are CSP authorized in Australia, but have customers in UK, can you resell Office 365 through CSP?

No. You can only resell in the region in which you are authorized. 

If my end customer purchased Office 365 Pro Plus through Volume Licensing, can I host it from my datacenter if I am QMTH authorized?

Yes. The end customer can purchase from any licensing program as long as it is Office 365 Pro Plus version.  As the service provider, you must be QMTH authorized.

 

If I purchase CSP licenses indirectly from my distributor, do I qualify for QMTH?

No.  You must CSP Direct authorized in order to that.  You cannot purchase from a distributor and offer VDI or Office Pro Plus.

If I sell Azure through CSP, how do I know which region my data is located?

With Azure, you get to pick the region.

If I sell Office 365 through CSP, which region is my service hosted from?

The address on the invoice determines the location of the services. 

***Watch out for the new Microsoft Cloud Agreement (MCA) coming in September.  You can download the old version here

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on August 24, 2017 in Cloud Solution Provider Program

 

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Licensing Office Online for External Users

11 Aug

What happens if you have end customers who want to use Office Online for external users (non-employees of your organization).  Is that SPLA?  In this article, we will break down Office Online through three programs – SPLA, Volume Licensing, and CSP.

SPLA

If you are hosting Office for another organization SPLA definitely fits.  As an example, if you provide DaaS to your customers who are also licensed for Office, they can access Office Online.  In this model, you license SharePoint (requirement for Office Online) Office by user, RDS per user, and Windows + SQL Server.   Very expensive to simply offer a customer the ability to view and edit documents online.

Volume Licensing and Office 365

Office Online was added as a Software Assurance benefit for Office in 2016.  End customer’s who simply want to view documents can download it directly from the Volume Licensing Services Center (VLSC).  End customers that require document creation, edit/save functionality will be required to have an on-premises Office license with Software Assurance or an Office 365 ProPlus subscription. Any customer that purchased an Office 2016 suite through Volume Licensing before August 1, 2016 will not require SA through August 1, 2019.   After August 1, 2019 they must buy SA for any on-premise Office licenses.

According to the Product Terms (May 2016) “If Customer has a License for Office 365 Pro Plus, then Customer may use Office Online services.  Each of Customer’s Licensed Users of Office 365 Pro Plus may access Office Online services for viewing and editing documents, as long as they are also licensed for SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business.”  It’s the last sentence that stings.  In other words, you want Office Online?  Better buy Office 365 E3.

Office Online for CSP

The same rules apply.  In this scenario, the hosting company could sell Office 365 E3 through CSP program to their end users.  In CSP, the end customer is paying month – month and paying for support.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on August 11, 2017 in Office 365

 

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Details of the Qualified Multitenant Addendum

03 Aug

There’s been a lot of talk as of late about the new QMTH addendum.  I’ve written a couple of articles on the topic here  In this article, we will summarize what is written in the addendum so there’s no surprises.  I listed some (not all) of terms and conditions to ensure you are up to speed on the latest developments.

  • CSP Membership – You (or affiliates) must be a Direct CSP partner.  This means you cannot leverage an Indirect CSP partner for this program.  In other words, if you receive CSP licensing from Ingram Micro or SherWeb (as an example) your partnership with those distributors/partner does not qualify for QMTH.  Your organization must be CSP Direct authorized, not your partner.
  • Must meet the system requirements – System Requirements can be found here
  • Have an active SPLA agreement.
  • Reporting Requirements – You will always need to report underlying licenses in SPLA.  Those underlying licenses could be any software to deploy a VDI solution – (Windows Server and RDS).   In addition, you must report (by the last calendar day of each month) the Windows 10/O365 licenses deployed.  This is manual, meaning you will send an email to the QMTH alias for submission.  Once automated reporting is available, you must enable Microsoft’s automated reporting tool.  Microsoft will use the tool to collect your customer’s organization ID and tenant ID as well as the total number of users accessing the software.
  • As the provider, you must report to your SPLA Reseller the program administrative fee.  If you are currently in the SCA program, you will be familiar with this SKU.
  • As the provider, you must make all education materials publicly available.  You cannot just sign up for CSP, the education material should be like what’s on the QMH website.
  • For each per user subscription to Windows 10 Enterprise, the end-user can only access up to four (4) instances of Windows 10 either on Azure or you, the QMTH hoster.  This is like the SCA program in which the end user has five (5) instances of Office Pro Plus, Windows 10 works the same way.

Listed above is a summary.  I encourage you to reach out to your Microsoft rep for additional information.  I am happy to review it further, it’s a new program with pluses and minuses.  Be sure to understand the minuses first 🙂

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 

 
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Posted by on August 3, 2017 in Office 365

 

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Don’t be Jimbo

24 Jul

Jimbo had a small IT firm for which he provided backup, security, and hosting for two clients.  He also purchased Office 365 licenses for a handful of users directly from the Microsoft Office 365 website and would bill them accordingly.  Jimbo also had an application he tried to develop to help end users better communicate with one another. It was similar to SharePoint, but more seamless and had better integration with third-party applications.  He had a SPLA, and had one person who submitted their usage report to their reseller.  Unfortunately, that person got sick and passed away.  Jimbo was sad and so was the rest of the staff.

To put his mind at ease, he spent every waking hour improving his application.  He thought it was going to be the next best thing.  I experienced the application firsthand myself, and found it to be a powerful tool.  I even asked to invest in it, but without any money, (Mrs. SPLA Man spent it all at Target), I had nothing to invest with.

Fast forward a year later.  Jimbo is still working on improving the application, and he's still hosting.  One day, Jimbo received an email from Microsoft.  It was titled “Self-Audit”, Jimbo was getting audited.  One thing left unmentioned, Jimbo is the nicest guy on the planet. He replied to Microsoft and in the end, provided them with everything.  All his server information, customer name, and reporting history.  It was an auditor’s dream.

Several weeks later, Microsoft provided Jimbo with the findings.  He owed $450,000 in unreported licensing fees.  Why so high?  No usage was being reported since the lady who reported SPLA passed away.  When she was reporting, she reported the wrong thing.  Instead of licensing Windows Datacenter, she reported Standard.  Instead of reporting physical processors and/or cores, she reported per VM.  Everything was a mess.  Jimbo, who neglected his hosting practice for months to focus on his application, was left feeling very uncertain about his future.  He did not have the funds to pay for licenses.

It’s unfortunate, but Jimbo had to shut down his hosting business.  The application he built?  Stopped.  He tried to sell it, and last I heard very few were interested.

Why such a depressing story and was it true?  Yes, the story is true (although slightly embellished).  Why share it?  I am telling you the story because there are too many organizations doing the same thing.  They have one person who manages the licenses, one person who was in contact with the reseller, and one person who knew what they were reporting.  What happens if that person leaves?  Too many organizations are also buying Office 365, but not getting the best discount.

Licensing is challenging, and in the case of Jimbo, his love wasn’t reporting usage, it was developing an application.  He should have had allocated resources to help manage his SPLA, so he could focus on what he knows best, the technology.

I am always asked why I created splalicensing.com and what's so different about SPLA Man than other blogs.  I think the main difference is honesty.  I am your licensing Siri or Alexa.  I am SPLAlexa. (that was bad).  Don’t be Jimbo.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man/SPLAlexa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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Posted by on July 24, 2017 in Compliance

 

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Breaking down Microsoft’s Q4 and what it means for your business.

21 Jul

Microsoft reported earnings last night that surpassed expectations and gave us insight into their cloud business. I am not a stock analysts, but I thought I would spend some time reviewing some of the highlights and my opinion for what’s next for the software (I mean cloud, actually, no -I meant Intelligent Cloud) giant.

Azure – Microsoft did not provide specific revenue numbers for Azure, but did say revenue grew 97% y/y.  Although exact numbers for Azure revenue is not specified, Azure is part of the all-important commercial space, which includes Dynamics 365, Azure, and a little program called Office 365.  That revenue number combined was over 18B which more than doubled last year’s number.

Office/Dynamics and Competition – Office 365 subscription business just surpassed the traditional Office model with revenue up 43%.  When was the last time you went to a box retailer and purchased software?  That’s a telling sign that more and more organizations prefer subscription pricing over box products.   Dynamics 365 was up 74%, probably because Dynamics in SPLA is about as complex as it can possibly get.  Need help with a Dynamics licensing question?  Ask your reseller.  The reseller will ask Microsoft – and then it goes into a big, dark, black hole until someone loses their mind.  Nothing happens.  Microsoft also revamped Dynamics in SPLA to make it very difficult to compete.  The same can be said for Office.  Where I see concern for Microsoft is with Google, who is just getting their foot in the door in the enterprise space.  If they make traction (and they will) it will be interesting to see the two giants go at it.  Google’s cloud platform is growing exponentially as well.

Surface Sales – I guess you can say is one of the low points of the conference call.  Surface revenue dropped 2%.  Xbox sales also dropped and became less profitable with price drops and competition.  That’s the bad news – the good news?  Maybe with the new CSP Windows 10 thing Microsoft will include Surface as part of the program to those not already a Surface Authorized Distributor, or make Surface authorization available to every CSP Direct partner.

LinkedIN – Only Microsoft can spend over 26B for an acquisition and investors are still wondering what it is they bought; and more importantly, not hurt their quarterly earnings.  Yeah, they can tie it in for Dynamics and Yammer/Teams with all those users.   They also have a pretty impressive data list of users to sell additional collaboration products and services to.  I guess the jury is still out on this.

Opinion – Microsoft recently announced a major change in their sales organization. Their sales teams that were focused on the enterprise need to focus more on solution type selling.  A lot of organizations in the industry are going through the same transformation.  It’s also not an easy thing to do.  Time will tell.

I wrote an entire article without mentioning Amazon, they report earnings next week.  It will be interesting to see how they compare to Microsoft and how much they grew year of year in comparison.  Lots of analysis say Microsoft will surpass AWS as the king of the cloud.  I still think Google is lurking in the background and might surprise some people as well.

What does all this mean for SPLA?  In my humble opinion, I think Microsoft better be careful with the way they are handling their third-party hosters.  Those numbers they threw out yesterday were great, but they can get even better.

Microsoft built a program for partners who have their own datacenters, relationships, and sales resources to promote Microsoft products and technology.   There are close to 30,000 SPLA partners (rough estimate) that have datacenters spread throughout the globe.  Nobody, can have the reach like your SPLA partners.  Google and Amazon do not have 30,000 datacenters, why disrupt it?  Don’t audit them, partner with them and help grow this business to build a true hybrid cloud ecosystem.  The strategy should be their cloud – our cloud, and customers will thank you.  Teaming with Walmart makes sense too.  Say what!

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man

 
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Posted by on July 21, 2017 in In My Opinion, Uncategorized

 

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