Tag: Licensing

Microsoft News – 2 February 2015

The big news of the last few days was the announcement that the next version of “Windows Server and System Center” won’t be released until 2016. This is quite disappointing.

Windows Server

Windows Client

Azure

Licensing

  • IaaS Gotchas: Compliance gotchas as it pertains to providing infrastructure as a service.

What is Windows-as-a-Service? FAQ

I heard “Windows as a Service” or WaaS being mentioned twice at an event on Wednesday. Straight away, as a blogger/speaker, I knew what questions people would ask. Here’s what this means:

Windows as a Service is a mindset from Microsoft. You don’t use an OS; your use apps and content. The OS should be a transparent enabler. However, the OS should be kept up to date with fixes, etc, and functionality can be added. Microsoft intends to offer free upgrades to the OS via updates once you are on Windows 10.

The Free Upgrade Offer

For one year, anyone running Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1 can avail of a free upgrade to Windows 10. After that point, it is likely that you will have to pay to upgrade to Windows 10.

Is Windows Moving to a Subscription Model?

No*. Once you are on Windows 10 you will get the continuous improvement updates for free. You will not be charged a monthly/yearly fee.

* Note that some business licensing (OVS and ESA) are actually already subscriptions.

What about Businesses?

Here’s what is explicitly stated (in a mail I received):

The upgrade offer does not apply to Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 8.1 Enterprise and Windows RT; it also does not it cover XP and Vista. Active SA customers may of course upgrade as part of their SA benefits.

Note that Enterprise customers have SA (Ent is an SA benefit) so they have a free upgrade even without this one-year offer.

I suspect that the other SKUs in businesses (without SA) will have upgrade entitlements in that first year but that has not been explicitly stated. To be honest, there would be no way to enforce it because lots of consumer machines actually do have Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 Pro. And let’s face it, Microsoft wants businesses to upgrade.

When Does the First Year Start?

When Windows 10 is “commercially available”. That is probably the Generally Available (GA) date, which can be several months after the Release To Manufacturing (RTM) date. In other words, when Windows 10 appears in stores either as boxed product or pre-installed machines.

How Long Will You get Windows 10 for Free For?

If your machine was legitimately licensed for Windows 7 or later, you get Windows 10 for free until:

  • The device the OS is installed on stops working
  • Microsoft stops supporting Windows 10

What about Windows RT?

It sounds like there is an “update” for Windows RT, but it might not be an upgrade to Windows 10. Sorry!

What About [Something Else]?

I don’t know yet.

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Microsoft News – 17 December 2014

Things have settled down a little after last week’s surprise Azure announcements.

Hyper-V

Azure

Office 365

Microsoft Partners

Licensing

  • Price increases in 2015!! SPLA/hosting licensing costs are going up. Hosters will have no choice but to pass that on to their customers.

Miscellaneous

Microsoft News – 9 December 2014

I do not give a flying fiddlers about some wizard Accenture is selling to deploy System Center. Moving on to relevant things …

Hyper-V

System Center

Azure

Intune

Licensing

Miscellaneous

Altaro – Webinar & eBook On Microsoft Licensing For Virtual Environments

Altaro has published a free e-book called Licensing Microsoft Server in a Virtual Environment. I know this is a hot topic because it’s one of this site’s top search results every month. The ebook, written by Eric Siron, covers:

  • The concept of Microsoft licensing in a virtual environment
  • Windows Server, Hyper-V Server 2012 & 2012 R2 licensing
  • Difference between keys & licenses
  • Understand license transfers, stacking & implications for a cluster
  • Mapped example diagrams of common virtual licensing environment

Altaro is also running a webinar on this topic on Decentber 4th, featuring fellow Hyper-V MVP Thomas Maurer and Andrew Syrewicze. This webinar will run for 45 minutes with live Q&A, starting at 10am EST or 3pm GMT.

Microsoft News – 24 November 2014

It’s been a slow few news days in the Microsoft world. Stuff I’m not linking to: the infinitely linked webcasts on mobility management and the Reign malware infecting computers in Ireland, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.

Windows Server

Windows Client

Azure

Office 365

Miscellaneous

Microsoft News – 17 November 2014

I’ve had a crazy few weeks with TechEd Europe 2014, followed by the MVP Summit, followed by a week of events and catchup at work. Today, I’ve finally gotten to go through my news feeds. There is a LOT of Azure stuff from TEE14.

Hyper-V

Windows Server

System Center

Windows Client

  • Windows 10 – Making Deployment Easier: Using an in-place upgrade instead of the traditional wipe-and-load approach that organizations have historically used to deploy new Windows versions. This upgrade process is designed to preserve the apps, data, and configuration from the existing Windows installation, taking care to put things back the way they need to be after Windows 10 has been installed on the system. And support for traditional deployment tools.
  • Windows 10 – Manageability Choices: Ensuring that Windows works better when using Active Directory and Azure Active Directory together. When connecting the two, users can automatically be signed-in to cloud-based services like Office 365, Microsoft Intune, and the Windows Store, even when logging in to their machine using Active Directory accounts. For users, this will mean no longer needing to remember additional user IDs or passwords.

Azure

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ASR SAN replication topology

Office 365

Intune

Operational Insights

Licensing

Microsoft News Summary – 6 October 2014

The big news today is that HP is “planning” to split. No, not leave, but divide into two.

Hyper-V

Windows Server

Office 365

Miscellaneous

You Cannot Switch To Azure Open Licensing – Yet

There are a number of ways that you can purchase Azure. You can get it as a part of an enterprise agreement (high cost of entry, but highest value). You can get it via one of these means:

  • Pay direct (credit card)
  • Trial
  • MSDN benefit

We in the licensing biz bundle those options up as MOSP (Microsoft online subscription program). And then there is Open volume licensing (low cost of entry with control over spending and no long/big commitment).

I was told that at WPC (I was not there) attendees were briefed that customers who were subscribing to Azure via MOSP (see above) could switch to Open licensing.

That is not true; at this point, if you have been consuming Azure via direct payment (credit card), trial, or MSDN benefit, then you cannot switch to Open licensing – yet.

Microsoft is addressing this issue, and we believe a change of some kind is coming this calendar year (no promises because I do not work for Microsoft). That will allow:

  • Customers paying by credit card to centralize and take control of their Azure spending
  • Use a free trial to evaluate and price an Azure deployment, and switch to their desired Open licensing

So right now, not possible, despite what we were allegedly told at WPC, but a change is coming to enable switching to Azure on Open.

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Microsoft News Summary – 19 September 2014

The positive highlight for me is the excellent TechNet article on managing tiered Storage Spaces. The lowlight was the unannounced price changes in Azure – (A) it was unannounced (B) there was no notice, and (C) it means that customers cannot plan; customers hate each and every one of those, especially the latter.

Hyper-V

Window Server

Windows

  • The September 30th Microsoft Event: Paul Thurrott (on Windows Weekly) confirmed that this event will not be streamed. Major mistake in my opinion. The attendees are a small set of media, and the subject matter is Windows “Threshold” in the enterprise. Sure … let’s not let the IT pros who will make the recommendation see the event. That’s reeeealllly sensible. Let the Windows 8 insanity continue.

Azure

Office 365

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Licensing

  • SPLA Audit start to finish: SPLA is based on an honour system – but audits have become a way of life with such licensing programs.

Miscellaneous